Rosado v. City of New York

Background

Francisco Rosado, described in the opinion as a Hispanic male, sued the City of New York, Thomas Galati, Howard Redmond, and Karl Pfeffer. He alleged employment discrimination based on national origin and age under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the Older Workers Benefit Protection Act, the New York State Human Rights Law, and the New York City Human Rights Law.

Rosado alleged that he joined the New York City Police Department in 1993 and became a lieutenant in 2006. He claimed that after Thomas Redmond became commanding officer of the Executive Protection Unit, Rosado was replaced as unit supervisor, reassigned to other positions, excluded from some opportunities, and delayed in receiving a promotion to lieutenant commander. Rosado also alleged that younger and non-Hispanic employees received better assignments, promotions, or training opportunities. He was promoted to lieutenant commander in May 2018, four months after emailing Thomas Galati about not receiving the promotion. In December 2018, he was transferred to another unit, which he characterized as an effective demotion.

The defendants moved to dismiss the entire action under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), which allows dismissal when a complaint does not state a legally sufficient claim.

Court’s Analysis

Administrative exhaustion and abandoned claims

The court held that Rosado had not exhausted the required administrative remedies for his age-discrimination claim under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act and the Older Workers Benefit Protection Act. Rosado did not respond to that argument, so the court treated those claims as abandoned and dismissed them with prejudice. The court also noted that his charge filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission did not mention age discrimination.

The court also held that Rosado failed to exhaust his Title VII disparate-impact claim. His administrative charge focused on alleged discrimination against him personally and did not identify a broader policy. The court therefore dismissed that claim.

Rosado also did not respond to the defendants’ argument that individuals cannot be held liable under Title VII. The court treated his Title VII claims against the individual defendants as abandoned and dismissed them.

Title VII discrimination claims

The court held that Title VII claims based on Rosado’s 2014 reassignments were time-barred because he filed his Equal Employment Opportunity Commission charge on April 13, 2018, making claims based on conduct before June 17, 2017 untimely. The court also treated failure-to-promote or delayed-promotion claims that accrued before that date as time-barred.

The court then considered Rosado’s remaining claim that his promotion to lieutenant commander was delayed. It noted that Rosado did not allege that he applied for a specific promotion, but concluded that his January 2018 email could be viewed, in Rosado’s favor, as expressing general interest in promotion where the promotion process allegedly did not provide a specific application opportunity.

The court did not decide whether the four-month delay was a sufficiently serious adverse employment action. Instead, it assumed that it was and held that Rosado had not alleged enough facts to support even the required minimal inference that discrimination caused the delay. The court found that the 2015 promotion of Karl Pfeffer could not support that inference because Rosado had not alleged that he had expressed interest in promotion at that time. The court also found that Rosado’s allegations about his reassignments, staffing, rejected offers to provide coverage, exclusion from training, and lack of consultation about promotions did not adequately connect the alleged delay to national-origin discrimination.

Hostile work environment

The court dismissed Rosado’s Title VII hostile-work-environment claim. A hostile-work-environment claim requires allegations that the workplace was permeated by severe or pervasive discriminatory intimidation, ridicule, or insult and that the conduct occurred because of the protected characteristic.

The court found that a claim based only on the 2014 reassignments was untimely. It also held that Rosado’s allegations that the reassignments were effectively demotions were conclusory. To the extent Rosado relied on his 2018 transfer to another unit, the court found that he did not allege facts supporting a minimal inference that the transfer was caused by discrimination. The court distinguished possible retaliation from discriminatory intent and concluded that allegations about other employees with discrimination complaints did not establish national-origin discrimination.

Disposition

The court stated that Rosado had already been given an opportunity to amend and had not requested another amendment. It therefore made the federal-claim dismissals with prejudice. The court declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction, meaning authority to hear related state-law claims, over Rosado’s remaining New York State and New York City claims. Those claims were dismissed without prejudice.

Judge Alison J. Nathan granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss, dismissed the federal claims with prejudice, dismissed the state and local claims without prejudice, directed the Clerk of Court to enter judgment and close the case, and stated that the order resolved Docket Number 35.