Bowman v. New York State Housing and Community Renewal

Background

Lorita M. Bowman, proceeding without a lawyer, sued the New York State Housing and Community Renewal (HCR), Arlene Marder, and Margaret Ramroop. She alleged employment discrimination based on age, race, national origin, and sex; retaliation; and a hostile work environment. Her claims arose under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 1981, and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act.

Bowman alleged that HCR passed her over for promotion in 2017 even though she had worked in HCR’s Rent Score Operations Unit since 2012 and scored 80% on a civil-service examination. She alleged that the two employees promoted instead were white women under age 40 who had scored 70%. She also alleged that, one day after filing a discrimination charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, she was told she would be transferred to another HCR unit because of reduced workload in her existing unit. Bowman characterized the new unit as unfavorable.

The court had dismissed Bowman’s initial complaint in a March 13, 2020 order. It dismissed some claims with prejudice and gave her permission to replead specified discrimination, retaliation, and hostile-work-environment claims. Bowman then filed an amended complaint that largely repeated her earlier allegations and added documents, including a 2016 list of examination candidates, records concerning the other unit’s processing times, and a paycheck from 2012.

Legal standard

The defendants moved to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), which tests whether a complaint alleges enough facts to state a legally plausible claim. The court was required to accept well-pleaded factual allegations as true and draw reasonable inferences for Bowman, while disregarding conclusory statements. Because Bowman was representing herself, the court read her allegations liberally, but it still required facts supporting more than speculation.

Claims against Marder and Ramroop

For the Section 1981 discrimination claims against Marder and Ramroop in their individual capacities, the court held that Bowman still had not alleged facts showing that either supervisor was personally involved in the 2017 promotion decisions. The new 2016 examination list did not mention Marder or Ramroop, the employees promoted in 2017, or the examination that Bowman said qualified her for promotion. The court therefore again rejected those individual-capacity claims.

For the discrimination claims against Marder and Ramroop in their official capacities, the court found that Bowman had not added facts supporting an inference that the promotion decision was motivated by her race, age, national origin, or another protected characteristic. The court also declined to consider a new discrimination allegation raised for the first time in Bowman’s opposition brief concerning another employee’s 2019 promotion. The court stated that this allegation involved a different event, was not included in the amended complaint, and did not show that Bowman applied for the position or was denied it because of a protected characteristic. The court dismissed this official-capacity discrimination claim without prejudice.

For retaliation, the court held that Bowman had not shown personal involvement by Marder or Ramroop in the transfer decision. It also found that she had not pleaded facts plausibly showing that HCR knew about her Equal Employment Opportunity Commission charge when the transfer decision was made. In addition, the new processing-time documents and 2012 paycheck did not show that the 2018 transfer was materially adverse. The court dismissed the official-capacity retaliation claims without prejudice and concluded that the individual-capacity retaliation claims failed for lack of personal involvement.

For the Section 1981 hostile-work-environment claim, the court found that the alleged incidents—including the failure to promote Bowman, the 2016 confrontation with supervisors, a 2013 workplace fight, and a 2017 accusation involving perfume—did not show a workplace sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of employment. The court also found that Bowman did not allege that Marder or Ramroop were directly involved in most of those incidents. It considered Marder’s alleged insults, yelling, and assignment of another employee to review Bowman’s work, but viewed those events as isolated incidents that did not alter Bowman’s employment or cause an identified job disadvantage. The court stated that the hostile-work-environment claim against Marder and Ramroop failed.

Claims against HCR

The court dismissed Bowman’s Title VII discrimination claim against HCR because the amended complaint did not adequately allege that HCR’s decision not to promote her was motivated by age, race, or national origin. The 2016 examination list did not shed light on the motivation for the 2017 promotions.

The court also dismissed Bowman’s Title VII retaliation claim against HCR because she did not plausibly allege that HCR knew about her charge when it decided to transfer her or that the transfer was a materially adverse employment action.

As to HCR’s hostile-work-environment claim, the court clarified that its earlier order had not granted Bowman permission to replead that claim. It reaffirmed that the Title VII and ADEA versions had been dismissed with prejudice for failure to exhaust administrative remedies and that the Section 1981 claim against HCR was barred by Eleventh Amendment sovereign immunity.

Disposition and possible amendment

The court granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss the amended complaint. Its conclusion states that the claims in the amended complaint were dismissed without prejudice. The court separately reaffirmed that HCR’s hostile-work-environment claim had already been dismissed with prejudice. The court set December 5, 2020, as the deadline for Bowman to move for permission to file a second amended complaint. Any such motion had to include the proposed complaint and a concise explanation of how it addressed the defects identified in the order. The order did not grant permission to file another amended complaint automatically.