No hostile work environment claim for NYU professor

The Court of Appeals holds that an NYU professor cannot proceed with a hostile work environment claim because it is time-barred. But the Court also finds that plaintiff may pursue his retaliation claim against NYU. The latter holding reverses summary judgment on that issue.

The case is El Chaar v. New York University College of Dentistry, a summary order issued on April 2. This blog post will cover the hostile work environment. The next will cover the retaliation claim. For now, we look at the racial harassment claim, and the many ways that such a time-barred claim cannot extend into the limitations period.

Plaintiff immigrated from Lebanon in 1993 and worked for NYU from 1995 through 2012, returning in 2013. During these time periods, plaintiff suffered derogatory remarks about his ethnicity. Yes, this even happens at NYU's College of Dentistry. After plaintiff filed an internal hostile work environment complain in August 2017, the Office of Equal Opportunity (OEO) found in February 2018 that "the evidence as a whole supported a finding of a hostile work environment." But plaintiff still does not have a case.

Plaintiff sued NYU under Section 1981, which prohibits racial discrimination and carries a four-year statute of limitations. Since plaintiff brought suit on October 6, 2021, all claims that accrued prior to October 6, 2017 are time-barred. Now, courts hold that hostile work environments permit the "continuing violations" theory, which holds that if any related harassment took place during the four-year period, then all the harassment that predated the statute of limitations is actionable. That's because hostile work environment claims inherently last for an extended period of time, both prior to and after the statute of limitations. 

The problem for plaintiff is that the post-October 6, 2017 incidents are not related episodes of harassment. A July 2019 letter to the Interim Department Clair, in which he said the hostility had not stopped, is not a related act of harassment within the limitations period because the letter "provides insufficient evidence that any incidents constituting 'part of the same discriminatory pattern or practice of mistreatment' took place within the limitations period." While plaintiff further argues that NYU failed to investigate  his complaints of retaliation and ongoing harassment within the limitations period, the Court of Appeals (Parker, Robinson and Perez) holds that no rational jury could find as such because none of the "alleged failures to investigate were part of the same course of conduct as the offensive statements that gave rise to the August 2017 OEO complaint." And, the Court says, "an employer's failure to investigate a discrimination complaint cannot, by itself, contribute to or constitute a hostile work environment absent a showing that the failure altered the terms and conditions of employment." Moreover, while plaintiff alleges that NYU failed to respond properly to his harassment complaint and its leaders did not engage with the trainings prescribed by OEO, "inadequate engagement by leadership in remedial trainings is not in itself part of the continuing course of conduct creating a hostile work environment."