Riggs v. Akamai Technologies

Background

Andrea Riggs brought claims against Akamai Technologies, Jason Hickey, James Massey, and Stephen Goldstein under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the New York State Human Rights Law, and the New York City Human Rights Law. She alleged that, beginning in 2013, male colleagues and supervisors made sexist, sexually explicit, and gender-stereotyping comments; treated her differently from male employees; reassigned accounts; excluded her from social events; denied her opportunities and resources; and threatened her with a performance improvement plan.

Riggs filed a discrimination charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on June 29, 2023, and received a notice allowing her to sue on October 23, 2023. The opinion states that she commenced this action on July 26, 2023. The court considered the allegations in her amended complaint as true for purposes of deciding the dismissal motion.

Arbitration

The defendants did not dispute that Riggs signed an arbitration agreement when she began working at Akamai. The parties also agreed that the federal Ending Forced Arbitration Act can make an arbitration agreement unenforceable when a case relates to alleged sexual harassment. The court concluded that Riggs plausibly pleaded a sexual-harassment claim based on a hostile work environment and that the entire case related significantly to the alleged harassing conduct. The court therefore denied the defendants’ motion to compel arbitration.

Hostile-Work-Environment Claims

The court held that Riggs plausibly alleged a hostile work environment under Title VII. It found that the alleged conduct could be viewed as frequent, severe, threatening, and humiliating, and that the allegations supported a connection between the conduct and Riggs’s sex. The court also concluded that the hostile-work-environment claims could proceed under the New York State and New York City human-rights laws.

The court considered whether some allegations were outside the applicable filing periods. It ruled that the 2013 taxi incident and the physical-assault incident identified in the opinion as occurring in 2017 were not sufficiently related to the timely allegations because they differed in nature and were separated by years of inactivity. It also found the pre-2015 allegations unrelated to the timely allegations involving Riggs’s current supervisor and colleagues. The court nevertheless held that the remaining allegations, including the allegations against Hickey, plausibly supported a hostile-work-environment claim.

The court denied dismissal of the state and city sexual-harassment claims against Hickey, Massey, and Goldstein. It explained that those laws can impose liability on people who aid or participate in discriminatory conduct. Title VII does not impose individual liability, according to the opinion.

Disparate Treatment

A disparate-treatment claim alleges that an employer treated an employee worse because of a protected characteristic. The court held that Riggs plausibly alleged such a claim under Title VII. It relied in part on allegations that Hickey assigned her less prestigious and problematic accounts, causing her to miss her sales quota, and excluded her from social events that male employees could attend. The court also found that these allegations plausibly supported the required inference of discriminatory intent.

Because the federal claim survived, the court denied Akamai and Hickey’s request to dismiss the related state and city disparate-treatment claims. The court granted Massey and Goldstein’s motion to dismiss the state and city disparate-treatment claims against them because Riggs made no timely allegations against them supporting those claims.

The court did not decide whether Riggs’s negative performance evaluation or the alleged threat of a performance improvement plan could independently support a disparate-treatment claim.

Retaliation

The court granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss the retaliation claims under Title VII, the New York State Human Rights Law, and the New York City Human Rights Law. The court determined that Riggs had not plausibly alleged that the defendants knew she was engaging in legally protected activity. Her alleged protest—that she was the most senior, qualified, and hardworking person on her team—could communicate that she believed the evaluation was unfair, but did not indicate that she was complaining about gender discrimination.

Leave to Amend and Disposition

The court granted Riggs permission to file a motion for leave to submit a second amended complaint concerning the deficient retaliation claims and disparate-treatment claims against Massey and Goldstein. The motion had to be filed within 21 days of the order and include the proposed complaint and a comparison showing the changes. The opinion states that, if Riggs did not file that motion within 21 days, those claims would be dismissed with prejudice.

The court denied the motion to compel arbitration. It granted the motion to dismiss with respect to Riggs’s retaliation claims and her disparate-treatment claims against Massey and Goldstein, but denied the motion in all other respects. The case was referred to Magistrate Judge Wang for general pretrial management. Laura Taylor Swain signed the memorandum order.