Nance v. New York Public Interest Research Group, Inc.

Background

Brenden Nance sued New York Public Interest Research Group Fund, Inc. (the Fund), New York Public Interest Research Group, Inc. (the Group), and Blair Horner. Nance alleged discrimination based on his association with his pregnant partner, gender, and familial status under Title VII, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, the New York State Human Rights Law, and the New York City Human Rights Law. He also alleged retaliation under those laws.

Nance had worked at NYPIRG since 2006 and became Statewide Outreach Director. His partner, Kristin Nance, filed an internal pregnancy-discrimination complaint in 2017, and Nance submitted a supporting letter. Nance later complained that he was treated unfairly, including through reduced responsibilities, exclusion from some meetings, negative evaluations, and denial of fundraising opportunities that could have produced commissions. He resigned on June 11, 2021, and stopped working on June 25, 2021. He filed a discrimination charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on April 19, 2022.

Summary-judgment evidence

The defendants moved for summary judgment, which asks whether the evidence shows that no important factual dispute requires a trial and that the moving party is entitled to judgment under the law. The court found that the defendants provided admissible evidence supporting their version of the facts, while Nance failed to cite admissible evidence creating a genuine dispute.

The court ruled that Nance’s declaration was inadmissible because of multiple reliability problems, including an apparently missing effective signature, misspellings of his name, shifts between first-person and third-person narration, and statements that appeared to have been copied from an earlier filing. The court also found that Alexandra Kirkpatrick’s declaration contained only unsupported conclusions and did not create a genuine factual dispute.

Claims against the Group

The court granted summary judgment on all claims against the Group because Nance did not respond to the defendants’ argument that the Group was not his employer. The court treated Nance’s failure to address that argument as a waiver. The court explained that an employer-employee relationship is a required element of a Title VII claim.

Federal discrimination and retaliation claims

The court held that Nance’s Title VII and Pregnancy Discrimination Act claims against the Fund failed for several independent reasons. First, Title VII generally requires an employee to file an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission charge within 300 days of the challenged employment action. Nance filed his charge on April 19, 2022, so actions before June 23, 2021, were outside that period unless an exception applied. The court ruled that Nance’s constructive-discharge claim accrued on June 11, 2021, when he submitted his resignation, rather than on his final day of work, June 25. Because the constructive-discharge claim was outside the 300-day period and Nance identified no other timely challenged action, the court held that the federal claims were time-barred.

Second, the court ruled that, even if the claims were timely, Title VII and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act did not provide a claim based solely on the pregnancy status of another person. Because Nance alleged discrimination based on his partner’s pregnancy rather than his own protected characteristic, the court held that he could not establish the required initial showing for a federal discrimination claim.

Third, the court held that Nance failed to rebut the defendants’ stated legitimate, non-retaliatory reasons for the challenged actions. Those reasons included having Nance manage a new pandemic-era fundraising operation, concerns about fairness because he controlled the distribution of fundraising assignments, having employees share credit-card-processing duties, hiring a new staff member to handle certain work, limiting some meetings to people whose participation was considered necessary, and Horner’s workload. The court held that Nance offered no admissible evidence or argument showing that these reasons were a pretext for retaliation. It therefore granted summary judgment on the federal claims.

State-law claims and disposition

The New York State Human Rights Law and New York City Human Rights Law claims were governed by standards different from the federal claims. After granting summary judgment on all federal claims, the court declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction, meaning its authority to hear related state-law claims in the same case. The court dismissed the state-law claims without prejudice to renewal in state court.

Conclusion

Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil granted the defendants’ motion for summary judgment. The court entered judgment dismissing all federal claims with prejudice and all state-law claims without prejudice to renewal in state court, and directed the Clerk of Court to close the case.