In Brown v. Montefiore Health System, Inc., No. 24-3078-cv, 2025 WL 2985389 (2d Cir. Oct. 23, 2025), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that plaintiff indeed stated a claim for a race-based discrimination (termination) claim under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the New York State Human Rights Law.
From the decision:
Brown alleges that her termination in 2022, after working at MMC for more than 20 years (including as a registered dietician), was motivated by the racial animus of her supervisor, Miriam Pappo, who is white. Although the district court held that Brown’s allegations were too conclusory to support a plausible claim, we disagree. In particular, the amended complaint alleges, inter alia, that: (1) Brown was the only Black employee in MMC’s Clinical Nutrition Department, App’x at 4; (2) Pappo, since being placed in her role as Director of the Department, has hired only one other Black employee, despite numerous hires over the years, id.; (3) Pappo was enthusiastic about that employee’s qualifications upon reviewing her written application materials, but after the applicant arrived for her interview—thus revealing her race—Pappo instead opted to hire a less qualified white male, id. at 5; (4) Pappo subsequently hired that Black applicant for a subordinate position as a “relief” dietician only after receiving pressure from staff, id.; (5) another Black former employee, who was terminated in 2019 and replaced by a white employee, also complained of discrimination by Pappo, including that Pappo “pressured, intimidated, and discriminated against her, failed to properly train her, and openly mocked and scolded her in front of other employees[,]” which, according to Brown, was the “exact same treatment [she] was subjected to at the hands of [Pappo],” id. at 26–27; and (6) Brown heard Pappo “disparag[e] communities which have [ ] largely Black demographic[s] in favor of those with largely white demographic[s],” id. at 27.5
The amended complaint further alleges that Pappo, motivated by this racial animus, engaged in a campaign of harassment to prompt Brown’s termination, including refusing to allow Brown to cover a particular colleague’s work shifts and offering those shifts to white dieticians, refusing to provide Brown with the proper ergonomic workstation to accommodate her medical needs resulting from a work-related injury, initially denying her the opportunity to serve as a preceptor for New York University oncology interns while all other dieticians in the department (who were white) served in that role, and submitting false information regarding Brown’s workers’ compensation case “in hopes that [Brown] would be terminated or resign.” App’x at 19; see Leibowitz v. Cornell Univ., 584 F.3d 487, 502 (2d Cir. 2009) (explaining that “an inference of discriminatory intent may be derived from a variety of circumstances, including, but not limited to: … the sequence of events leading to the plaintiff’s discharge” (internal quotation marks and citation omitted)). “Because discrimination claims implicate an employer’s usually unstated intent and state of mind, … rarely is there direct, smoking gun, evidence of discrimination.” Vega, 801 F.3d at 86 (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). As such, even if alleged “instances of disparate treatment may not separately rise to the level of adverse employment actions, [a plaintiff] is permitted to create a mosaic with the bits and pieces of available evidence that, taken together, support a plausible inference of intentional discrimination.” Buon, 65 F.4th at 84 (alterations adopted) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted); accord Vega, 801 F.3d at 86–87; see also Stratton v. Dep’t for the Aging for City of New York, 132 F.3d 869, 879 n.6 (2d Cir. 1997) (“Actions taken by an employer that disadvantage an employee for no logical reason constitute strong evidence of an intent to discriminate.”).
Taking these and other allegations in the amended complaint collectively, and construing them in the light most favorable to Brown, we conclude that she has met the minimal burden of alleging facts that give rise to a plausible inference of discrimination with respect to her termination. See Vega, 801 F.3d at 87 (explaining that, at the motion to dismiss stage, “the question is not whether a plaintiff is likely to prevail, but whether the well-pleaded factual allegations plausibly give rise to an inference of unlawful discrimination, i.e., whether plaintiffs allege enough to ‘nudge their claims across the line from conceivable to plausible.’ ”
Accordingly, the court vacated the order of the district court, insofar as it dismissed plaintiff’s discriminatory termination claim.