WILSON v. JPMORGAN CHASE BANK, N.A.

Background

Wanda Wilson, an African American woman who worked for JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. for more than 20 years, sued under the New York State Human Rights Law and the New York City Human Rights Law. She asserted claims for a hostile work environment, race discrimination, and retaliation. After the court dismissed her earlier claims with permission to amend, Wilson filed a Second Amended Complaint. JPMorgan moved to dismiss that complaint under Rule 12(b)(6), which allows dismissal when a complaint does not allege enough facts to state a legally plausible claim.

The court declined to disregard the new allegations in the Second Amended Complaint. It found that the changes from the earlier complaints were not blatant contradictions and that Wilson had acted within the permission previously given to amend. The court therefore treated the Second Amended Complaint as the operative pleading for the motion.

Hostile Work Environment Claims

The court held that Wilson adequately pleaded hostile-work-environment claims under both laws. For the New York City law claim, the question was whether JPMorgan treated Wilson less well, at least partly because of her race. The court found that Wilson alleged numerous overt and indirect instances of race-based conduct, including being called the “African American Barbie,” hearing supervisors refer to African Americans as “those people,” being told to leave African American coworkers “downstairs,” being subjected to stricter security procedures than non-African American assistants, and repeatedly hearing a coworker use a racial slur despite her objections.

The court also held that the allegations met the more demanding standard applicable to Wilson’s New York State law claim. Taken together, the alleged comments and conduct could be severe or pervasive enough for a reasonable person to find the workplace hostile or abusive. Wilson also plausibly alleged that she personally experienced the workplace as abusive and that the hostility was because of her race. The court denied JPMorgan’s motion to dismiss both hostile-work-environment claims.

Race Discrimination Claims

The court denied the motion to dismiss Wilson’s race-discrimination claims under both the New York City and New York State laws. The court explained that, under the city law, hostile-environment and discrimination claims are not treated as separate categories in the same way. The allegations supporting the hostile-work-environment claim therefore also supported the city-law discrimination claim.

For the state-law claim, Wilson identified Sabo’s refusal to change her title from Executive Administrative Assistant to Senior Executive Administrative Assistant as the relevant adverse employment action. She alleged that Sabo said Senior Executive Assistants were exclusively non-African American and that she had to choose between a salary or bonus increase and the title change. The court found that this alleged statement by a direct supervisor was direct evidence supporting a plausible race-discrimination claim. The court did not dismiss the claim based on JPMorgan’s statute-of-limitations argument because the timing of the incident was not clear from the complaint, and it rejected JPMorgan’s argument that Wilson had to plead additional comparator or qualification facts in light of the alleged direct evidence of discrimination.

Retaliation Claims

The court dismissed Wilson’s retaliation claims under both the New York City and New York State laws. It found that the Second Amended Complaint repeated the same causation allegations that had been found insufficient in the earlier round of the case. Wilson had not plausibly connected the alleged retaliatory acts to her protected complaints about discrimination and harassment.

Disposition

Judge Furman granted in part and denied in part JPMorgan’s motion to dismiss. The hostile-work-environment and race-discrimination claims under both laws were not dismissed. The retaliation claims were dismissed. The court directed JPMorgan to answer the remaining claims within three weeks unless it ordered otherwise, and directed the Clerk to terminate the motion and the listed additional defendants.