In Gehlaut v. New York City Department of Education, No. 24-1741 (2d Cir. 2025), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the dismissal of plaintiff’s retaliation claim asserted under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
From the decision:
To state a claim for retaliation under Title VII, “the plaintiff must plausibly allege that: (1) defendants discriminated—or took an adverse employment action—against him, (2) ‘because’ he has opposed any unlawful employment practice.” Vega, 801 F.3d at 90 (quoting 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-3(a)). As with discrimination claims, we construe claims for retaliation under the NYSHRL “to align with the NYCHRL’s more liberal pleading standard.” Qorrolli, 124 F.4th at 123. And to state a claim for retaliation under the NYCHRL, a plaintiff must show that he took action opposing his employer’s discrimination and that, as a result of his opposition, “the employer engaged in conduct that was reasonably likely to deter a person from engaging in such action.” Mihalik, 715 F.3d at 112.
Gehlaut’s complaint falls well short of alleging a plausible causal connection between his June 2020 SDHR complaint and the July 2021 disciplinary charges against him. Apart from a conclusory assertion that he “believe[s]” Johnson retaliated against him, J. App’x at 13 ¶ 18, the only factual support for causation alleged in Gehlaut’s complaint is that the disciplinary charges were filed after he submitted the SDHR complaint. But when a plaintiff relies on temporal proximity alone to establish causation, courts “uniformly hold that the temporal proximity must be very close,” which usually means less than three or four months. Clark Cnty. Sch. Dist. v. Breeden, 532 U.S. 268, 273 (2001) (internal quotation marks omitted). In the absence of other factual allegations supporting causation, the approximately one-year period between Gehlaut’s SDHR complaint and the disciplinary charges against him is far too long to support a plausible inference of causation under federal, state, and city law.2 See Hollander v. Am. Cyanamid Co., 895 F.2d 80, 85–86 (2d Cir. 1990) (declining to infer causation from a period of approximately three months between a protected activity and the employer’s adverse action).
Accordingly, this decision is instructive on how courts assess causation based on temporal proximity in the context of a retaliation claim.