Azzarmi v. Sedgwick Claims Management Services

Background

Aasir Azzarmi, proceeding without a lawyer, sued Sedgwick Claims Management Services, Inc. and Sedgwick SIU, Inc. Two claims remained from his Third Amended Complaint: discrimination and retaliation under 42 U.S.C. § 1981. The pending motion concerned only Count II, the retaliation claim.

Azzarmi alleged that he was injured at work in January 2017 while working as a flight attendant for Delta Airlines and that Sedgwick handled workers’ compensation matters involving Delta employees. He alleged that Sedgwick employees accused him of insurance fraud because he is Hispanic, used racial slurs, and referred to Hispanic people with racial epithets. He further alleged that he reported Sedgwick’s racial discrimination to the New York State Workers’ Compensation Board in August or September 2017.

Azzarmi alleged that, around the same time, the Workers’ Compensation Board found that Sedgwick had persistently delayed and wrongfully denied his workers’ compensation claims and fined the defendants. He alleged that in October 2017 the defendants retroactively denied previously approved leaves, causing more than seven unexcused absences under Delta’s policy, and that he was then terminated.

Motion and legal standard

Sedgwick moved under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), which allows dismissal when a complaint does not allege enough facts to state a legally plausible claim. At this stage, the court was required to accept the complaint’s well-pleaded factual allegations as true and draw reasonable inferences for Azzarmi.

To state a retaliation claim under Section 1981, Azzarmi had to plausibly allege that he engaged in protected activity, that the defendants knew about it, that they took a materially adverse action against him, and that the protected activity caused that action.

Court’s analysis

Sedgwick’s principal argument was that Azzarmi’s complaint to the Workers’ Compensation Board could not be protected activity because the Board lacked statutory authority to resolve racial-discrimination issues. The court rejected that argument. It explained that protected activity can include opposing an employment practice and that a complaint to a third party may qualify even when that third party lacks direct power to correct the employment problem.

The court also found that Azzarmi plausibly alleged a good-faith, reasonable belief that Sedgwick had discriminated against him because of his Hispanic identity. His allegations that a Sedgwick employee explicitly connected the accusation of workers’ compensation fraud to his Hispanic identity supported that conclusion.

The court concluded that Azzarmi plausibly alleged an adverse action because he claimed that the defendants’ retroactive denial of leave resulted in his termination. It also found that the roughly two-month period between his complaint to the Workers’ Compensation Board and his termination was sufficient at the pleading stage to support a possible causal connection.

The court described whether the Workers’ Compensation Board complaint adequately notified the defendants about racial discrimination as a closer question. The court noted that the complaint did not clearly allege that the defendants knew the racial basis of his report. Nevertheless, the defendants had not raised that specific argument in their motion, and the court found it plausible, viewing the allegations in Azzarmi’s favor, that the defendants had access to the complaint or otherwise learned about its racial aspects during the proceedings.

Disposition

The court denied the defendants’ motion to dismiss Count II. The court directed the Clerk of Court to close the pending motion and mail the opinion and order to Azzarmi. It also scheduled a status conference for October 23, 2025. The denial resolved only the motion to dismiss; the court did not make a final decision on the ultimate merits of the retaliation claim.