Feingold v. New York
| Decision Date | 30 April 2004 |
| Docket Number | Docket No. 02-7985. |
| Parties | Larry E. FEINGOLD, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. The State of NEW YORK, the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles, Leon Schulgasser, Kathleen A. Sullivan, Evelyn Waltrous, Sharon Lee-Sang, Fernando Tapia, Phyllis Isaacs, Other Administrative Law Judges and Employees, Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit |
Allegra L. Fishel, New York, New York, for Appellant.
Robert H. Easton, Assistant Solicitor General, for Eliot Spitzer, Attorney General of the State of New York (Marion R. Buchbinder, Assistant Solicitor General, on the brief), New York, New York, for Appellees.
Before: CALABRESI, F.I. PARKER,1 and SACK, Circuit Judges.
Plaintiff Larry E. Feingold ("Feingold" or "plaintiff") appeals from a decision and order of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Jed S. Rakoff, J.) entered on July 31, 2002. Feingold alleged that while employed as an Administrative Law Judge ("ALJ") by the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles ("DMV") he was subjected to disparate treatment and a hostile work environment on the basis of race, religion, and sexual orientation, and was retaliated against for complaining of such discrimination. Feingold claimed that both the DMV and the State of New York (the "State") violated Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act ("Title VII"), as amended, 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e et seq., the New York City Human Rights Law, see N.Y.C. Admin. Code §§ 8-101 et seq. ("NYCHRL"), and 42 U.S.C. § 1983 ("Section 1983"). He also claimed that the named individual defendants in their individual capacities violated the New York State Human Rights Law, N.Y. Exec. Law §§ 290 et seq. ("NYSHRL"), the NYCHRL, and Section 1983. The district court granted summary judgment to defendants on all of Feingold's claims.2 Feingold now appeals from that decision.3
For the reasons discussed below, we affirm in part and vacate and remand in part. We begin with a Table of Contents.
i. Evidence of a Hostile Work Environment
ii. Evidence to Impute Liability to the DMV
i. Prima Facie Case ii. Defendants' Explanation for Feingold's Firing
Feingold, a white, Jewish, gay male, alleges he was discriminated against on the basis of race, religion, and sexual orientation, while employed for approximately eight months as an ALJ by the DMV. Feingold began work at the DMV's Manhattan North Office (the "MNO") of the Traffic Violations Bureau (the "TVB") on October 28, 1999. The senior ALJ supervising the office was Judge Kathleen Sullivan ("Sullivan"), a white, Christian, heterosexual female. The other ALJs in the MNO were Sharon Lee-Sang ("Lee-Sang"), a black, Christian, heterosexual female; Fernando Tapia ("Tapia"), a black, Christian, heterosexual male; Evelyn Waltrous ("Waltrous"), a black, Christian, heterosexual female; and William Sica ("Sica"), a white, non-Jewish, heterosexual male. Also working in the office was Phyllis Isaacs ("Isaacs"), the Chief Clerk, a black, Christian, heterosexual female. The overall supervising ALJ for all TVBs in the state was Leon Schulgasser ("Schulgasser"), a white, Jewish male who worked in the neighboring Brooklyn North Office.4
Feingold alleges that from the time he began working at the MNO, he was subjected to hostile treatment by his African-American colleagues because of his race, religion, and sexual orientation. The MNO's training method called for more experienced ALJs to provide informal guidance to new ALJs. Feingold avers that rather than providing such assistance, the three African-American ALJs largely ignored him, and were unhelpful and even antagonistic when approached for advice. In particular, he alleges that when he asked a question of Waltrous, who was assigned to train him, she snapped at him, "I ain't nobody's teacher." As a result, Feingold contends, within one week of beginning his job, he was adjudicating contested hearings with insufficient training. Feingold alleges that this treatment was significantly different from that of Pauline Haynes, an African-American ALJ hired in May 2000, who, according to the plaintiff, received both more substantial instruction and more time to train before hearing cases.
Once he began to hear cases, Feingold alleges, he was assigned a heavier caseload than the African-American ALJs. He asserts that the African-American judges routinely arrived at work late, took long lunches, left work early, and reassigned their cases to Feingold and Sica. According to Feingold, the African-American judges were never reprimanded for this behavior.
Feingold asserts that the MNO was permeated with anti-Semitic hostility. Feingold says that, rather than addressing him by his own name, Lee-Sang, Tapia, and Isaacs would call him by other "Jewish sounding" names, such as "Feinstein," "Goldstein," "Goldman," "Silverman," and "Feinberg," often in a negative tone. Feingold also alleges that persons having business with the DMV were regularly categorized by Lee-Sang as "Jewish" or "not Jewish;" that Lee-Sang frequently referred to him as Jewish; that she treated Jewish lawyers representing parties differently from non-Jewish lawyers, remarking at least once, and that a comment made by Lee-Sang regarding a conference on Holocaust reparations also demonstrated her religious insensitivity.5 Feingold further alleges that in "nearly every" conversation that took place in his presence, Lee-Sang would say something about his religion or hers or tell stories about a Jewish person. According to Feingold, Lee-Sang also regularly proclaimed "Praise Jesus" and "Hallelujah," and asked other employees to join her in these affirmations. On such occasions, Feingold alleges that she would publicly inform him that he was excused from participating because he was Jewish. In addition, Feingold alleges that Waltrous commented negatively on Schulgasser's connections with other Jews, and that she described the food she ate at a work-related conference in the Catskills as "Jewish pig food." Feingold also asserts that Christian symbols were displayed in the office, including in public waiting areas, year-round.
Besides anti-Semitic hostility, Feingold contends that hostile attitudes toward homosexual persons pervaded the office. He alleges the words "fag" or "faggot" were used in his presence at least three times, that Sica advised him not to be "openly gay," and that Lee-Sang made at least three hostile references to his sexual orientation. In addition, he alleges that after he was terminated, he learned that a clerk referred to him as "that faggot judge" in the public area of the office.
Feingold asserts that he first complained about his treatment to a supervisor on May 24, 2000, when he told Schulgasser that he believed that he was experiencing discrimination on the basis of race, sexual orientation, and religion. When Feingold mentioned anti-Semitism, Schulgasser purportedly responded by asking "Judge Lee-Sang?", and offered Waltrous's name when plaintiff complained of racial discrimination. Feingold claims that Schulgasser admitted that Schulgasser himself had experienced anti-Semitism at the MNO, and that he advised Feingold to "sit tight" until a transfer could be arranged. Finally, Feingold alleges that, when the conversation concluded, Schulgasser indicated that he should keep quiet, saying, "Oh, and Larry, we never had that conversation, keep that in mind."
On June 6, 2000, Feingold was in the hearing room preparing to adjudicate a contested traffic violation when he realized that he had left his judge's stamp in another room. He told the witnesses, a police officer and a motorist, to wait while he retrieved it. When he returned, the police officer was no longer present because the officer had decided to move his car.6 Upon discovering that the police officer had left without permission and, allegedly, after waiting several minutes, Feingold entered verdicts of "not guilty" on the charges against the next two motorists on the docket because both cases required testimony from the absent officer. Defendants claim that during this proceeding, Feingold stated "they need to be taught a lesson," indicating that the "not guilty" verdicts were designed to "teach" the police officer. However, in their statement of undisputed facts, defendants admit that Feingold only said "[t]hey have to be taught something," and Feingold's affidavit states that he was referring to motorists needing to learn to go outside the hearing room to pay their fines. Consistent with this explanation, the "purported transcript" of the hearing indicates that the statement occurred after Feingold instructed a motorist to "[g]o out to the cashier and say your name." After the hearing, Feingold went to the judge's library, the room where the ALJs in the MNO have their desks. A pane in the library's...
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