Carrasco v. Metropolitan Transit Authority

Background

Alicia Carrasco sued the Metropolitan Transit Authority, the New York City Transit Authority, Linsey Seymour Gosin, and Aliaa Abdelrahman. She alleged employment discrimination and retaliation under federal law, New York State law, and New York City law. The federal claims were brought under Title VII and were not challenged by this motion.

Carrasco alleged that she was paid less than male and non-Hispanic employees, denied promotions, given heavier workloads, and subjected to a hostile work environment after making workplace complaints. She also alleged that she was isolated in an empty room without a computer or phone on January 19, 2023. She filed complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and later with the New York State Division of Human Rights. The state agency dismissed her complaint for lack of probable cause.

The Defendants’ Motion

The defendants filed a partial motion to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12. They argued that some claims were barred by New York’s election-of-remedies rule because Carrasco had already raised them with the New York State Division of Human Rights. They also argued that other claims were not adequately pleaded and that some retaliation allegations were too old under the applicable two-year limitations period.

State and City Human-Rights Claims

The court held that Carrasco’s New York State Human Rights Law and New York City Human Rights Law claims were barred to the extent they arose from the January 12 and January 19, 2023 incidents or from the investigation into a document leak allegedly undertaken in retaliation for her Equal Employment Opportunity Commission charge. The court treated those claims as barred because they involved the same matters presented to the state agency.

The court rejected the defendants’ argument that the state-agency filing barred all of Carrasco’s state and city claims. The Second Amended Complaint covered additional incidents over several years, including alleged retaliation occurring after the state-agency complaint was filed. Those additional allegations were not dismissed on this ground.

New York Labor Law Claims

The court denied dismissal of Carrasco’s New York Labor Law equal-pay claim. Carrasco alleged that she and similarly situated Computer Associate III employees performed substantially equal work under similar conditions, but that she earned $92,816.96 annually while other employees earned as much as $118,463. She also alleged that she received smaller raises than other non-Hispanic employees performing the same or similar work. The court held that identifying a group of similarly situated employees, rather than one specific comparator, was sufficient at the pleading stage.

The court granted dismissal of Carrasco’s New York Labor Law retaliation claim as to complaints made before June 4, 2022, because those allegations were outside the two-year limitations period. The court declined to apply the continuing-violation rule because the older allegations involved separate acts rather than one continuing unlawful practice.

The court otherwise denied dismissal of the retaliation claim. It held that Carrasco adequately alleged protected activity, including informal workplace complaints and the filing of this lawsuit; adverse employment actions, including exclusion from communications, isolation in the workplace, and disciplinary action; and a connection between the complaints and the alleged retaliation. The court noted that the allegations concerning retaliation for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission charges did not establish that the defendants knew about those charges, but the broader retaliation claim survived on other grounds.

Disposition

The court’s motion ruling was denied in part and granted in part. The third, fourth, fifth, seventh, and eighth causes of action were dismissed in part for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction to the extent they relied on matters raised in the state-agency complaint. The ninth cause of action was dismissed in part as time-barred to the extent it relied on retaliation before June 4, 2022. The tenth cause of action, the New York Labor Law equal-pay claim, was not dismissed. The court denied leave to replead the dismissed portions and directed the Clerk of Court to close the motion.