In Cadet v. Macy’s, Inc., No. 22-CV-7406 (VSB), 2026 WL 1998595 (S.D.N.Y. July 10, 2026), the court, inter alia, denied defendant’s motion for summary judgment on plaintiff’s claims of race and national origin-based hostile work environment.
As to the issue of whether the alleged conduct was sufficiently “severe” or “pervasive” under 42 USC § 1981 and the New York State Human Rights Law, the court explained:
In January 2020, after Adler alleged that Cadet hit her and Cadet denied the accusation, Cadet lodged an internal complaint alleging that Adler was discriminating against her. (Pl. 56.1 ¶ 11.) Plaintiff alleges that Adler made disparaging comments regarding black people, such as “[black people] don’t belong here, [they] complain a lot, black people are lazy, could be lazy.” (Id. ¶ 15; Pl. Dep. Tr. 235:12-19.) Adler said, in a November 15, 2019 statement related to the incident, that Cadet was “an evil person, an animal, and bully.” (Doc. 46-9 at 2; see also Doc. 38-9 at 37.)
After Plaintiff returned from furlough in August 2020, she worked with Imbachi. Imbachi’s conduct included intervening in an interaction between Cadet and a customer and telling the customer, “she don’t know any better, she’s Haitian.” (Pl. 56.1 ¶ 28.) In front of Cadet on a different occasion, Imbachi threatened another black employee by saying if she didn’t take a certain retirement package, he would “hang her from a tree and beat her.” (Id. ¶ 28.) Imbachi later repeated the comment to Cadet, asking “are you going to hang me from a tree and beat me?” (Id. ¶ 28.) Cadet also alleges that Imbachi, on January 22, 2021, told multiple coworkers that Cadet was “not Black, [she was] Haitian.” (Id. ¶ 29; see also Pl. Dep. Tr. 94:4 –96:20; Doc 38-2.)
However, a jury crediting Plaintiff’s allegations could reasonably find that Imbachi’s conduct alone created an objectively hostile work environment based on Plaintiff’s race and national origin. Imbachi openly disparaged Cadet’s national origin to a customer, and thereafter told other coworkers that she was not Black, she was Haitian. A reasonable juror could conclude that the disparaging nature of Imbachi’s initial remark about Cadet being Haitian was then amplified by Imbachi’s statement that Cadet was “not Black, but Haitian” – a remark that was itself inappropriate. Imbachi also made multiple comments to Black employees, including Cadet, about hanging someone from a tree. These comments evoke the extreme, racist brutality of lynching. See History of Lynching in America, NAACP, https://naacp.org/find-resources/history-explained/history-lynching-america (last visited July 9, 2026) (“Lynchings typically evoke images of Black men and women hanging from trees.”). Courts have routinely relied on particularly egregious remarks with allusions to historical brutality, like the hanging from a tree comment, in finding an objectively hostile work environment. See Whidbee v. Garzarelli Food Specialties, Inc., 223 F.3d 62, 66, 70–71 (2d Cir. 2000) (emphasizing “physically threatening” nature of Plaintiffs’ coworker’s comment that he had a “rope in the back shed to hang [a Black coworker’s] butt” in finding evidence of objectively hostile work environment based on race (internal quotation marks omitted)); Grimes-Jenkins v. Consol. Edison Co. of New York, Inc., No. 16-CV-4897, 2021 WL 1226658, at *5 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 31, 2021) (finding that Plaintiff’s coworkers’ statements about throwing her back “into the fields” created a triable issue of fact as to whether there was a racially hostile work environment given possible racial connotations harkening back to slavery (internal quotation marks omitted)).
Cadet raises a triable issue of fact as to whether she experienced objectively hostile conduct sufficient to “alter[ ] the conditions of her working environment.” Alfano, 294 F.3d at 374. While it is true that the Adler and Imbachi incidents did not take place in close succession,7 Cadet need only show that her hostile working environment “was sufficiently severe or sufficiently pervasive, or a sufficient combination of these elements, to have altered her working conditions.” Redd, 678 F.3d at 175 (internal quotation marks omitted) (emphasis in original). I find that the severity of the alleged incidents and comments compensates for the relative lack of continuity, and that considered in its totality, a reasonable juror could find that the course of conduct was objectively hostile. I note, however, that due to the explicit and repeated invocation of Plaintiff’s race and national origin by Imbachi, in conjunction with allusions to hanging Black employees from a tree, Imbachi’s conduct alone is sufficiently severe to satisfy the first element of a hostile work environment claim.
The court then proceeded to find that the alleged harassment may be imputed to Macy’s, and was tied to plaintiff’s race and national origin (based on comments referencing same).
And, having found that defendant failed to show it is entitled to summary judgment under plaintiff’s federal and state law claims, the court held that defendant was “a fortiori not entitled to summary judgment under the more expansive” New York City Human Rights Law.