In 1913, the poet Gertrude Stein wrote that “a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.” Flowers aside, sometimes in employment law, things are not what they appear on the surface. Sometimes, for example, a resignation that results from intolerable work conditions is something else -- it is a constructive discharge. If you have endured work conditions so toxic as to be intolerable, you may have cause for a lawsuit under New York law. To discover what options exist for you to get justice for your intolerable workplace, you should speak to a knowledgeable New York employment discrimination lawyer.
A federal case from here in New York City illustrates what an intolerable workplace can look like.
The employee, T.A., was a Black woman and a Canadian national. In 2020, the woman was set to begin her second year as a resident physician in the Neurology program at a Manhattan teaching hospital. Before she began that second year, she allegedly informed her program director that she needed a delayed start date of July 29, 2020, due to requirements imposed by her H-1B immigration visa. The director told the woman that starting on July 29 would delay her graduation date and “negatively impact her fellowship applications.” By contrast, the director allegedly allowed a non-Black resident to graduate on time even though that resident, like T.A., also needed a “visa-related start date delay.”
After T.A. started her second year, problems continued. The director allegedly made numerous racially charged comments, such as highlighting the resident’s having obtained her medical degree from a historically black (HBCU) institution in Tennessee and “expressing surprise that [T.A.] was doing so well in the program.” The director also allegedly made comments describing Black patients as “malingering.”
Additionally, according to the lawsuit, the resident experienced differential treatment on several occasions, including being “told to complete additional tasks following an eighteen-hour shift rather than hand off her patients, while other residents were relieved on time.” Senior residents allegedly told T.A. not to call them overnight for help but encouraged T.A.’s peers to do so.
The resident attempted to transfer to the Internal Medicine program, but the program director allegedly blocked the transfer. Faced with an inability to secure a transfer from the Neurology program to any program at the hospital, T.A. resigned and subsequently sued the hospital, alleging, among other things, constructive discharge.
How the Law Defines a Constructive Discharge
Before looking into how the court resolved the hospital’s motion to dismiss the resident’s constructive discharge claim, it pays to investigate more closely exactly what constructive discharge is. In 2000, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals said that constructive discharge occurs when an employer, rather than directly firing an employee, “intentionally creates an intolerable work atmosphere that forces an employee to quit involuntarily.”
Whether or not work conditions are “intolerable” is an objective standard in a constructive discharge lawsuit. Conditions qualify as intolerable if “they are so difficult or unpleasant that a reasonable person in the employee’s shoes would have felt compelled to resign.”
The trial court concluded that the resident provided enough in her pleadings to overcome the hospital’s motion to dismiss the constructive discharge claim. T.A. alleged that the director of the Neurology program (as well as others) “made racist and racially charged comments on several occasions,” that the director and others undermined her in public, that they sabotaged her (such as modifying her pager “so that she missed critical communications while on shift,”) that she received a heavier workload than other residents, that the Neurology director strongly suggested to T.A. that she consider another line of work, and that “department leadership interfered with her efforts to transfer to a different residency program” at the hospital.
All of those things, when added together, were enough that, if proven at trial, could amount to “a work environment so antagonistic that a reasonable jury could find it intolerable to a reasonable person,” the court wrote in ruling for the resident.
Have you resigned from a job only because the conditions were utterly intolerable? If so, you may be entitled to justice based on a constructive discharge cause of action. You owe it to yourself to investigate all your legal options. You can begin by reaching out to the New York employment discrimination attorneys at Phillips & Associates, PLLC. Our team is fully versed on the available causes of action (including constructive discharge) and can help you map out a strategy that best fits your situation. To find out more about how we can help you, contact us online or call (866) 229-9441 to schedule a free, confidential consultation today.