Legal Blog of Attorney Greg Curry

In a recent case, Kobos v. Target Corporation , our local federal district court (the Eastern District of New York), dismissed a lawsuit against Target for employment discrimination. Not only is this a recent case, but it is useful in illustrating a number of legal issues re: discrimination lawsuits against employers. The plaintiff was a 62-year-old woman “of Polish nationality”. The Riverhead Target hired her around 2007 as a “Team Member”, to work in the store wherever needed. Eventually, the plaintiff was assigned to a specific department, where she had a supervisor. The plaintiff claimed that in March, 2014, the supervisor called the plaintiff “crazy” in front of co-workers for walking to work in a snowstorm; and after being reprimanded by the Store Team Leader for doing so, the supervisor began giving the plaintiff difficult and unfair work assignments, and reduced her hours. In late May, 2014, the plaintiff went on a medical leave of absence and never returned to wo...

New York is an "at will" employment state, meaning that, in the absence of a contract, you can be fired at any time, for any reason, or for no reason at all, unless the reason is based on something like age, race, religion, disability, etc. (just a handful of categories). (Government employees have more protections than private-sector employees, such as First Amendment protections.) One of the few exceptions to the at-will employment rule is New York Labor Law §201-d. The statute is lengthy and has lots of caveats and qualifiers and defenses (for the employer). But the gist of § 201-d is that an employee can't be disciplined or fired (or not hired) for something they do on their own time, away from work, that is legal, and that is not against the employer's interests.  The statute and the reported cases mostly deal with "recreational" and "political" activities, and the cases can turn on whether something was a "recreational activity...