In Klass v. New York City Dept. of Educ., No. 510822/2020, 2026 WL 2622093 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. Aug. 27, 2026), the court denied plaintiff’s motion to reargue the portion of the prior motion resulting in the dismissal of plaintiff’s claims of age and disability discrimination asserted under the New York State and City Human Rights Laws.
From the decision:
A motion for leave to reargue shall be based upon matters of fact or law allegedly overlooked or misapprehended by the court in determining the prior motion (CPLR § 2221 [d] [2]). The determination to grant leave to reargue lies within the sound discretion of the court.
Here, plaintiff failed to demonstrate that the Court overlooked or misapprehended the relevant facts or misapplied any controlling principle of law in the prior order. On a motion to dismiss, the court merely examines the adequacy of the pleadings. A pleading is not an empty formality, however, and conclusory factual allegations do not provide the support necessary to survive a motion to dismiss under the CPLR § 3211 (a)(7) standard. Plaintiff was unable to meet that standard here.
The State and City Human Rights Laws (“NYSHRL” and “NYCHRL,” respectively) both make it unlawful for an employer to discriminate against an employee on the basis of age and disability (see Executive Law § 296 [1] [a]; Administrative Code § 8-107 [1] [a] [3]). A plaintiff alleging discrimination in violation of the NYSHRL must establish among other elements that the adverse action occurred under circumstances giving rise to an inference of discrimination. Under the NYCHRL, the plaintiff must establish that she or he was subject to an unfavorable employment change on the basis of a protected characteristic. As was the instance in Ayers, the dispute here lies in whether the amended complaint sufficiently alleges circumstances which give rise to an inference of age or disability discrimination.
The Court’s prior ruling that the Amended Complaint did not sufficiently state a claim for age and disability discrimination was correct for the following four reasons.
First, a probationary employee may be discharged without a hearing, or statement of reasons, for any reason or no reason at all, in the absence of a demonstration that the dismissal was in violation of the law.
Second, plaintiff did “not make any concrete factual allegations in support of his claims of age- and/or disability-related discrimination, other than that he was over 40 years old and disabled, and was treated adversely under the NYSHRL or less well under the NYCHRL. Plaintiff’s allegations in this respect amount to mere legal conclusions, and do not suffice to make out this element of his claims.
Here, the causal inference that plaintiff failed to obtain tenure, initially at the Lincoln School, and subsequently at the West Side School, because he is a disabled 40-plus year old, simply “does not follow” (Daniel v City of New York, 2021 WL 5988305, *9 [SD NY 2021]). The Amended Complaint is full of this faulty syllogism, wherein the Amended Complaint, • 30 provides “[the Lincoln School] Defendants never gave Plaintiff a legitimate chance to get tenure because of his age”; ¶ 33 provides “because of Plaintiff’s age, [the Lincoln School Defendants] refused to grant him tenure”; ¶ 39 provides “Both Plaintiff and [nonparty] Dr. Danner were targeted by [the Lincoln School’s principal]. Plaintiff was denied tenure and Dr. Danner had bogus [Education Law §] 3020-a charges brought against her” and ¶ 56 provides “[t]he West Side School Defendants denied Plaintiff tenure and terminated his employment with the West Side School because of Plaintiff’s age and disability. But for Plaintiff’s age and disability, he would have been granted tenure.
Third, plaintiff’s multiple allegations that older teachers like him were discriminated against at Lincoln School were made, in each instance, “upon information and belief.”
Fourth, plaintiff does not allege facts that would enable any meaningful assessment of whether he was similarly situated to the two younger non-disabled ESL teachers at the Lincoln School and the younger, non-disabled ESL teacher at the merged West Side School, so as to potentially support the inference that the denial of tenure to him at each school was because of discriminatory animus. Plaintiff alleged in paragraph 19 of the Amended Complaint that “he was promised that he would be eligible for tenure after his first year of teaching at the . . . Lincoln School.” Plaintiff derived that promise from the school’s principal’s contemporaneous statement to him that, “[y]ou being up for tenure is certainly not an issue for me. You can include information about your previous years in your [tenure] packet.” Whereas the Lincoln School’s principal expressed that the subject of plaintiff’s tenure was not an issue for him, nothing in his statement indicated that plaintiff would, in fact, be considered for and granted tenure.
(Citations, internal quotation marks, and bracketing omitted; paragraphing altered; cleaned up.)
Accordingly, the plaintiff denied plaintiff’s motion for leave to reargue defendants’ motion to dismiss plaintiff’s amended complaint.