DeJesus v. Bon Secours Community Hospital

Background

Samantha DeJesus moved for reconsideration of the court’s February 12, 2024, opinion and order, which had granted in part and denied in part defendants’ motion to dismiss her amended complaint. Her reconsideration motion challenged only the dismissal of her pregnancy-discrimination claim under the New York State Human Rights Law. She did not challenge the court’s conclusions concerning her hostile-work-environment and failure-to-accommodate theories.

DeJesus argued that the court had overlooked that her employment was terminated while she was pregnant. The court described the applicable pleading requirement: she had to plausibly allege that her employer took adverse action against her and that her protected status was a motivating factor in the employment decision. To support a pregnancy-discrimination theory based on disparate treatment, she needed direct evidence of discriminatory intent or circumstantial evidence, such as different treatment of a comparable employee who engaged in similar conduct.

Analysis

The court concluded that DeJesus had not alleged that Specialist Paganetti engaged in similar conduct but was treated differently. Specifically, DeJesus did not allege that Paganetti failed to report to work for several days after being told by a supervisor and human-resources representatives to come to the office, without being terminated. The court also found that DeJesus’s allegations that defendants terminated her because of her pregnancy were conclusory and lacked particularized supporting facts.

The court rejected DeJesus’s argument that an analysis supporting her Family and Medical Leave Act retaliation claim also established her New York pregnancy-discrimination claim. In the earlier analysis, the court had relied primarily on the short time between DeJesus’s announcement of a second pregnancy and her notice that she would need additional leave. The court explained that this could support an inference that her need for Family and Medical Leave Act leave was a motivating factor in her termination, but it did not necessarily show that the termination was disparate treatment based on her status as a pregnant person under the New York law.

A motion for reconsideration is a request to revisit an earlier ruling. The court said such a motion requires an intervening change in controlling law, new evidence, or a need to correct clear error or prevent manifest injustice. It also may not be used to present new arguments that could have been made earlier. The court noted that defendants had previously argued that no coworker was alleged to have engaged in conduct comparably serious to DeJesus’s conduct, and that DeJesus had not addressed that argument in her opposition to the original dismissal motion.

Ruling and Effect

The court held that it had not overlooked any facts that might have changed its earlier conclusion on the New York pregnancy-discrimination claim. It therefore denied DeJesus’s motion for reconsideration and instructed the clerk to terminate the motion. The court also rescheduled the initial pretrial conference for May 7, 2024, and directed counsel to submit a proposed discovery plan and scheduling order by April 30, 2024.