In Gates, Nicole v. New York City Human Resources Administration, No. 24-CV-5310 (NRM), 2026 WL 523115 (E.D.N.Y. Feb. 25, 2026), the court, inter alia, denied defendant’s motion to dismiss plaintiff’s race discrimination claim asserted under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
After determining that plaintiff sufficiently alleged that they were subjected to an “adverse employment action” in the form of denial of overtime opportunities, it turned to the inference of discrimination element of this claim.
From the decision:
At the pleadings stage, a plaintiff only needs to show that that “the employer took adverse action against her at least in part for a discriminatory reason, and she may do so by alleging facts that directly show discrimination or facts that indirectly show discrimination by giving rise to a plausible inference of discrimination.” Vega, 801 F.3d at 87.
Plaintiff’s pleadings fulfill that standard. The Amended Complaint includes many allegations of disparate treatment on the basis of race, stating that Plaintiff, as the only Black employee in her unit, was given worse assignments, denied overtime, and excluded from meetings and conversations, while the same was not true of her Russian colleagues. “[A] showing of disparate treatment [is] a common and especially effective method of establishing the inference of discriminatory intent” in Title VII cases. Abdu-Brisson v. Delta Air Lines, Inc., 239 F.3d 456, 468 (2d Cir. 2001); see Mandell v. Cnty. of Suffolk, 316 F.3d 368, 379 (2d Cir. 2003).
Further, while Plaintiff does not present any direct evidence of discriminatory intent, she does note that at various points, both her supervisors and coworkers have used labels like “aggressive” or “intimidating” in describing her. The Second Circuit has found that “racially charged code words may provide evidence of discriminatory intent” even without the use of “explicitly racial language.” Mhany Mgmt., Inc. v. Cnty. of Nassau, 819 F.3d 581, 608–09 (2d Cir. 2016). In any case, a plaintiff “do[es] not have to allege facts showing animus on the basis of race to survive a motion to dismiss for a disparate treatment claim. [She] must only meet the ‘minimal’ burden of facts of showing the possibility of differential treatment, without direct evidence of discrimination.” Xia v. 65 West 87th Street Hous. Dev. Fund Corp., No. 20-CV-03576 (ER), 2020 WL 7230961, at *7 (Dec. 8, 2020) (internal citation omitted). Here, that burden is particularly easy to uphold where Plaintiff has alleged that she was the only Black woman, and indeed, the only non-Russian person, in her unit.
Defendant argues that Plaintiff has failed to demonstrate one of the elements needed to establish a prima facie of discrimination — namely, that her Russian employees were “similarly situated in all material respects.” Brown v. Daikin Am. Inc., 756 F.3d 219, 230 (2d Cir. 2014); see Def Mem. at 24–25. However, the “similarly situated” question “presents a question of fact, rather than a legal question to be resolved on a motion to dismiss.” Id. While “it is insufficient for a plaintiff to make naked assertions of disparate treatment without factual allegations indicating those employees treated differently were similarly situated,” Sosa v. N.Y.C. Dep’t of Educ., 368 F. Supp. 3d 489, 514 (E.D.N.Y. 2019), here, Plaintiff has alleged that her Russian colleagues worked in the same unit, were in “similar” or the “same” roles, and reported to the same supervisor. That is more than enough at the pleadings stage.
Accordingly, the court concluded that dismissal of plaintiff’s race discrimination claim was not warranted.