Plaintiff successfully pleads retaliation claim (Newton v. LVMH Part II)

The Court of Appeals has provided further guidance on how to determine if a Title VII retaliation plaintiff pleads a causal link between her protected activity and the adverse action, such as termination. We do not just look at the timing of the adverse action but its context.

The case is Newton v. LVMH, issued on September 21. I covered the protected activity holding at this link. The protected activity took place in August 2022, when plaintiff declined to meet with her supervisor to discuss settling her pending claims. Plaintiff was fired in December 2022. That four-month gap is enough to plead a prima facie case. The Second Circuit has issued numerous rulings stating that a certain time period is enough to assert causation. Here is how the Court (Bianco, Menashi and Brindisi [D.J.]) frames the inquiry in this case:

the time between the refusal and the termination is as much as four months. We have previously held that similar amounts of time are sufficient to suggest causation. See, e.g., Gorzynski v. JetBlue Airways Corp., 596 F.3d 93, 110 (2d Cir. 2010) (“[W]e have previously held that five months is not too long to find the causal relationship.”); Abrams v. Dep’t of Pub. Safety, 764 F.3d 244, 254 (2d Cir. 2014) (five months); Gorman-Bakos v. Cornell Co-Op Extension of Schenectady Cnty., 252 F.3d 545, 555 (2d Cir. 2001) (four months). 

Importantly, “[w]here temporal proximity is not the only evidence that bears on a causal connection, we have recognized that the lapse in time between the protected activity and adverse action can be longer.” Banks v. Gen. Motors, LLC, 81 F.4th 242, 277-29 78 (2d Cir. 2023). That additional evidence of causation can arise in the context of an ongoing discrimination lawsuit brought by the employee. . . . Moreover, in looking at “the facts as a whole,” we can also consider intervening patterns of “antagonism” or a “drumbeat of retaliatory animus” that do not themselves necessarily rise to a level of an adverse employment action.

Plaintiff does not merely rely on temporal proximity but the pattern of antagonism that followed the filing of her lawsuit, including her humiliating, public termination. Ultimately, "the combination of temporal proximity and these antagonistic actions lead us to conclude that Newton has plausibly alleged causation."