In Siani v. New York City Dep’t of Educ., No. 155156/2025, 2026 WL 2826449 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. Sep. 08, 2026), the court, inter alia, held that plaintiff sufficiently alleged a claim of disability-based hostile work environment under the New York City Human Rights Law.
In sum, in this case, plaintiff, a teacher, alleges that she was “seriously injured in an accident at her workplace on or about September 28, 2023, when attempting to de-escalate a student in crisis and the student was hitting her, bit her and caused her to fall back on her left hip and hit her head on a bookshelf and once on the ground the child continued to hit her” resulting in a diagnosis of a traumatic brain injury with chronic post-concussive migraines.
Plaintiff asserted claims of failure to engage in a cooperative dialogue, failure to accommodate her disability, disability discrimination, and hostile work environment.
As to plaintiff’s hostile work environment claim, the court explained:
From the decision:
To state a cause of action for hostile work environment under the NYCHRL a plaintiff must adequately allege that she was subject to unequal or less favorable treatment because of her membership in a protected class (Chin v New York City Hous. Auth., 106 AD3d 443, 445 [1st Dept 2013]). The standard under the NYCHRL is broader than under federal or state law, where the conduct must be severe or pervasive.
Defendant DOE asserts that plaintiff’s complaint is devoid of allegations to support a hostile work environment claim under the NYCHRL and instead has conclusory allegations that fail to meet the NYCHRL standards. Specifically, the DOE argues that plaintiff did not state how her alleged different treatment was motivated by discriminatory animus.
Plaintiff argues that the Principal’s failure to accommodate her disability and had her continually working each day worsened her disability. Specifically pointing to the Principal’s comments questioning whether she could have been injured due to her size relative to the student, the 11 month wait to substantively address her accommodation requests, and a colleague that does not have a disability was excused from active play duty while plaintiff was told that was an essential work function.
The evidence provided, including allegations that the DOE ignored Plaintiff’s medical documentation and failed to engage in a cooperative dialogue, supports Plaintiff’s claim that her work environment was hostile. Under Serrano v. City of New York (226 AD3d 575 [1st Dept 2024]), differential treatment of similarly situated employees can support a claim for hostile work environment. Here, Plaintiff alleges that her non disabled colleague was treated more favorably and was not subjected to the same scrutiny in seeking an accommodation, thereby creating an inference of hostility.
Accordingly, dismissal of this claim was not warranted.