In Chislett v. New York City Department of Education, No. 24-972-cv, 2025 WL 2725669 (2d Cir. Sept. 25, 2025), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, inter alia, vacated the lower court’s award of summary judgment on plaintiff’s race-based hostile work environment claim.
As it was undisputed that plaintiff subjectively perceived the environment as hostile, the court focused on the objective prong of the hostile work environment test. From the decision:
Drawing all reasonable inferences in Plaintiff’s favor, a rational juror could find that discriminatory conduct at the DOE was sufficiently severe and pervasive to have created a hostile work environment. There is no “threshold magic number of harassing incidents,” id. at 439 (internal quotation marks omitted), and Chislett set forth sufficient evidence for a rational juror to find that she was repeatedly exposed to racial harassment at her workplace throughout 2018 and 2019.
First, Chislett presented evidence from which a rational jury could find that racist comments were expressed during bias trainings. For example, instructors mentioned several times that the “values of [w]hite culture are supremacist.” App’x at 137–38. Similarly, during one training session, Ababio-Fernandez, Senior Executive Director of the OEA, declared: “There is white toxicity in the air, and we all breathe it in.” App’x at 141. In the sessions, there was persistent messaging to the effect that white culture is generally “[d]efensive[ ];” “[e]ntitle[d];” “[p]aternalis[tic];” “[p]ower [h]oard[ers];” and “[p]rivilege[d].” App’x at 139; App’x at 141; App’x at 216; App’x at 221. Further, there was physical segregation of white employees and singling out of staff by race during one training session as participants were ordered as to racial privilege associated with whiteness and physically “lined up to reveal the dividing ‘color line of privileges that favored whites.’ ” App’x at 141. Negative generalizations and stereotypes about white people were also targeted specifically at Chislett during the trainings. For instance, during a Q&A session, instructors told Chislett that her “interest in excellence was perfectionism and consistent with white supremacy.” App’x at 138–39. On the question of the objectivity of considering the training environment hostile and abusive, it is pertinent that one of Chislett’s co-workers was similarly upset about the racial generalizations and that another regarded the DOE as “an extremely hostile environment for white individuals.”8 App’x at 2090.
In addition, a reasonable juror could find from the evidence in the record that there were racialized comments expressed outside the trainings. As a spillover from the trainings, conversations took on a racialized tone, and OEA employees directed terminology from the trainings at Chislett. When Chislett disciplined or managed subordinates, she was allegedly called racist9 and labeled “white and fragile.” App’x at 145. Far from being “episodic” or isolated, these alleged comments were continuous and concentrated, especially given the frequency of the OEA’s racial conversations. Perry v. Ethan Allen, Inc., 115 F.3d 143, 149 (2d Cir. 1997). Construing the evidence most favorably to Chislett, a rational juror could find that there was a consistent “pattern” wherein Chislett “could expect [racist] remarks and other harassment at any time.” Gorzynski, 596 F.3d at 103.
For example, at an internal meeting on September 17, 2018, when Chislett asked her Black subordinate Renee why she was late to a meeting she was supposed to help lead (a question appropriately put by a supervisor to a subordinate), Renee told Chislett she was making a “race-based judgment” and could “not be trusted.” App’x at 146. The following week, Renee referred to the previous incident and admonished Chislett: “How dare you approach me out of your white privilege!” App’x at 146. In or around November 2018, two Black subordinate employees on Chislett’s team told her that “race is at the center of every conversation” they had with her. App’x at 147. Further, at one point, Chislett told her team that “this is becoming almost unbearable for me because there is increasing hostility.” App’x at 452. In response, Renee stated: “How dare you use the word unbearable, there is black people dying in the street, you don’t have the right to use that term. You’re coming from the position of white privilege and white supremacy.” App’x at 452. The presence of such racialized conflicts and the frequent accusations that Chislett was operating out of white privilege and supremacy for performing ordinary supervisory responsibilities further support her hostile work environment claim.
Third, Chislett presented evidence of comments expressed to another DOE employee of partially white parentage that a reasonable juror could find racially discriminatory. For instance, in February 2019, Chislett heard Renee use racialized sentiments when discussing a “white adjacent” colleague “from a mixed race family” who “adopted [B]lack daughters” and married “a white man.” App’x at 471–72. After the colleague attempted to monitor Renee’s productivity, Renee called her “a slave master,” and another employee labeled her a “white dominant leader.” App’x at 472. While not directed at Chislett, these statements are pertinent for several reasons. First, discriminatory “conduct not directly targeted at or spoken to an individual but purposefully taking place in [her] presence can nevertheless transform [her] work environment into a hostile or abusive one.” Rasmy v. Marriott Int’l, Inc., 952 F.3d 379, 389 (2d Cir. 2020); see also Cruz v. Coach Stores, Inc., 202 F.3d 560, 570 (2d Cir. 2000) (“Because the crucial inquiry focuses on the nature of the workplace environment as a whole, a plaintiff who herself experiences discriminatory harassment need not be the target of other instances of hostility in order for those incidents to support her claim.”). Furthermore, such discriminatory conduct by the same individual who directed similar conduct at a plaintiff may confirm the objective reasonableness of the plaintiff’s perception of the conduct directed at her as racially discriminatory. Such conduct also tends to confirm that supervisory personnel are aware of and tolerate the alleged racial harassment, providing evidence of a municipal policy or custom of complicity.
From this “mosaic” of evidence, a rational juror could find that Chislett experienced a racially hostile work environment. Vega v. Hempstead Union Free Sch. Dist., 801 F.3d 72, 86 (2d Cir. 2015) (internal quotation marks omitted). Collectively, Chislett presented evidence of racially-charged statements expressed during trainings, in meetings, and about another employee in her presence, creating a genuine dispute of material fact about whether the workplace was racially hostile. As such, “whether the conduct taken together created a work environment that was sufficiently hostile to violate [§ 1983] is a question of fact for the jury.”
The court proceeded to explain that plaintiff presented sufficient evidence that plaintiff’s supervisors knew about the racial harassment plaintiff suffered but did nothing to stop it, satisfying the requirement that this conduct may be imputed to plaintiff’s employer.