In Pratt v. Megan J. Brennan, Postmaster General et al, 2020 WL 364195 (S.D.N.Y. Jan. 22, 2020), the court, inter alia, dismissed plaintiff’s hostile work environment claim.
From the decision:
Here, Plaintiff has failed to plausibly allege a hostile work environment claim. Plaintiff argues that the Amended Complaint includes “allegations of harassing and discriminatory conduct,” but the Court finds no such specific allegations in the Amended Complaint. Although Plaintiff alleges that she was repeatedly denied positions for which she was qualified, other than a conclusory statement that Plaintiff “experienced a hostile work environment,” no other allegations of incidents of race or gender-based harassment appear in the Amended Complaint. To the extent Plaintiff seeks to rely on Shapiro’s statements requesting Plaintiff to take a position in Maybrook and speaking in an “informal tone” to Plaintiff, there are no allegations indicating that they were insults, let alone insults based on sex, race, or age. Simply stating that Plaintiff “experienced a hostile work environment” is not enough to plausibly allege a hostile work environment claim, as the Court “need not credit her mere conclusions that a hostile work environment … has existed and been pervasive” at USPS. [Internal citations omitted.]
The court also rejected plaintiff’s argument that “Plaintiff’s repeated rejections from jobs that she was purportedly qualified for constitute a hostile work environment”, noting that “this theory of a hostile work environment claim has been rejected by courts in the Second Circuit.”