King v. Aramark Servs. Inc.

96 F.4th 546

Kristen KING, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. ARAMARK SERVICES INC., Defendant-Appellee.

Docket No. 22-1237

August Term, 2023

United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit

Argued: September 20, 2023

Decided: March 20, 2024

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of New York (Crawford, J.)

Josephine Ann Greco, Greco Trapp, PLLC, Buffalo, NY, for Plaintiff-Appellant.

Stephanie Schuster, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, Washington, D.C. (Anne Martinez, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, Philadelphia, PA; Jade Yee, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, Chicago, IL, on the brief), for Defendant-Appellee.

Before: Walker, Chin, and Robinson, Circuit Judges.

Robinson, Circuit Judge:

In this case, Plaintiff-Appellant Kristen King claims that her employer, Defendant-Appellee Aramark Services Inc. ("Aramark"), subjected her to a sex-based hostile work environment, sex-based discrimination, and retaliation, all in violation of the New York State Human Rights Law ("NYSHRL") and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. See N.Y. Exec. Law § 290 et seq.; 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq. We are called upon to review the district court's dismissal of her NYSHRL claim and its award of summary judgment to Aramark on her Title VII claims.

At the motion to dismiss stage, the district court concluded that King had not plausibly alleged any NYSHRL violation, so it dismissed her state law claims. See King v. Aramark Servs., Inc., No. 1:19-cv-77, 2019 WL 3428833, at *14-17 (W.D.N.Y. July 30, 2019) ("King I"). Its dismissal encompassed two rulings. First, the district court ruled that Aramark could not incur liability under § 296(1)(a) because King was not hired as a New York-based employee. Id. at *15. Second, the court concluded that § 298-a, the NYSHRL provision governing extraterritorial liability, did not authorize a cause of action where an out-of-state employer committed discriminatory acts originating outside of New York. Id. at *15-16.

We agree with the district court's state law rulings, though we affirm its dismissal of King's § 296(1)(a) claim on slightly different grounds. Rather than focus on whether Aramark hired King as a New York-based employee, we conclude that under the New York Court of Appeals' "impact" test, any impact felt by New York was tangential and cannot give rise to § 296(1)(a) liability.

At the summary judgment stage, the district court entered summary judgment for Aramark on all three of King's Title VII claims. See King v. Aramark Services, Inc., No. 1:19-cv-77, 2022 WL 1460238 (W.D.N.Y. May 9, 2022) ("King II"). It concluded that King's hostile environment claim under Title VII was time-barred and that no reasonable jury could render a verdict for King on her sex-based discrimination and retaliation claims.

These rulings were erroneous. Under the continuing violation doctrine, King's hostile work environment claim was timely. A jury could reasonably conclude, based on the evidence in the record, that King's termination, which occurred within the limitations period, was part of the pattern of conduct comprising the hostile work environment in which King suffered sex-based animus. Her claim for a sex based hostile work environment was accordingly timely.

As for King's sex-based discrimination and retaliation claims, the district court impermissibly discredited evidence that King's supervisor subjected her to an unrelenting course of mistreatment that he did not impose on her male colleagues with similar job titles and responsibilities. The district court also improperly discredited evidence that suggested King's supervisor interfered with an HR investigation to machinate her termination, as well as evidence that could support a finding that Aramark retaliated against King.

In sum, for the reasons set forth more fully below, we AFFIRM the district court's dismissal of King's state law claims, and we VACATE and REMAND with respect to her Title VII claims.

BACKGROUND

I. The Facts

Below, we present the facts in the light most favorable to King and draw all reasonable inferences in her favor. See Banks v. General Motors, LLC, 81 F.4th 242, 251-52 (2d Cir. 2023).¹

A. King's Mistreatment

Aramark is a corporation whose business includes providing food and other services to hospitals.

From 2005 to 2010, King worked for an Aramark entity before beginning a program to receive a master's degree. In 2012, after completing her degree program, King worked for Aramark in various leadership positions servicing Aramark's contract with Valley Health System ("VHS"), pursuant to which Aramark provided food and facility services to seven healthcare facilities in Virginia and West Virginia. She first served as the General Manager of Food and Nutritional Services. About three years later, Aramark promoted King to serve as General Manager of Food and Environmental Services, a "dual manager" role that entailed supervising two business units. In 2016, after a purported corporate restructuring that eliminated dual manager positions (more on this later), King returned to her previous title as the General Manager of Food. King's job required her to manage as much as $23 million in "total managed volume," and her team transacted approximately $10 million in business annually. Jt. App'x 1116.²

In February 2015, King and several male employees began reporting directly to Griffith Thomas, a district manager. From that point on, King suffered a steady course of mistreatment from Thomas, culminating in her termination in 2017.

For example, during district-wide conference calls, Thomas would single out King in front of other Aramark employees and cite her performance with VHS as a negative example of what not to do. Viewed in the light most favorable to King, Thomas's disparagement was unwarranted. King points to several examples of her satisfactory performance: On several occasions, VHS executives indicated that they were pleased with King's work; her performance metrics for client loyalty, frequency of injury, and inventory management exceeded that of some of Thomas's male direct reports; and, at Thomas's behest, King helped her male peers address their weaknesses.

Further, during King's performance review for the 2016 fiscal year, Thomas rated her as inconsistently meeting expectations and denied her a merit-based salary increase. But when Aramark looked at various objective performance metrics untethered to Thomas's personal input, it found that King met 93.9% of her corporate financial goals and 100% of her individual objectives, meriting an annual bonus equal to 94.5% of her total possible payout, or $15,300. Notably, for the three years before Thomas became King's supervisor, King received a salary increase every year. This and other evidence suggest that, contrary to Thomas's criticisms, King's work on the VHS contract was at least satisfactory.

Nevertheless, Thomas often took steps to undermine her performance. He excluded King from important financial meetings and interfered with her management by meeting with her directors, clients, and subordinates without notifying her. He also gave King unrealistic deadlines and expectations, denied her appropriate office space, and spoke to her in a rude, condescending, dismissive, and hostile manner—often in front of other colleagues and superiors. King never saw Thomas treat other male workers, including his direct reports, in any of these ways.

King also maintains that Thomas fabricated performance-related complaints to try to get her fired. For instance, in a document, Thomas said King's patient satisfaction scores were below her target level. But the evidence suggests this wasn't true. At one VHS facility, King received a patient satisfaction score of 100%. Additionally, in 2017, Thomas required King to get his advance approval for any financial decision exceeding $1,000. Because King oversaw millions of dollars in business, it was infeasible to get Thomas's approval for every invoice over $1,000. By imposing this impracticable protocol, Thomas set King up to fail, which, in turn, could supply him with ammunition to critique her performance. Thomas did not require his other male direct reports to jump through a similar $1,000 approval hoop. Moreover, when Thomas initiated disciplinary action based on King's alleged performance deficiencies, he and Aramark's Human Resources department (HR) did not substantiate their claims with supporting documentation or follow Aramark's performance management policy for handling such matters.

Significantly, during a 2016 meeting about the VHS facilities, King saw a file on Thomas's laptop named "Kristen King legal file." Jt. App'x 1171. When King asked what she did to justify the creation of the "legal file," Thomas did not answer and instead redirected the conversation. Discovery later revealed that Thomas had prepared a termination letter in July 2017—roughly two months before King was fired—under circumstances suggesting he had planned to orchestrate King's firing well before the events for which she was purportedly fired even occurred. The letter listed various reasons "to back up termination," including unsatisfactory hourly turnover rates, a statistic for which King stated she could not have been responsible and should have been attributed to an Aramark district manager. Jt. App'x 1723.

As for King's dual manager position, she reported that when Thomas told King that she would revert to her prior position, he said her demotion resulted from a "corporate-wide decision" to "abolish[ ] the dual manager" role. Jt. App'x 1099. But King later learned a male counterpart got to keep his dual manager status. She stated that when a VHS executive found out about King's demotion, he asked, "If [the male colleague] is a dual GM, why is Kristen King not and why did you pull her from [the dual manager role?]" Id.

Thomas also body shamed King—that is, he implicitly disparaged her figure. In the two years in which King reported to Thomas, he would "stare"...