Background
Jeffrey Lax and other faculty members at Kingsborough Community College at the City University of New York (CUNY) brought suit in 2021 against CUNY, individual co-workers, their union — the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) — and PSC president Barbara Bowen, alleging religious discrimination and a hostile work environment. The plaintiffs contended that the union defendants had participated in or facilitated workplace discrimination against them on the basis of religion.
The union defendants — PSC and Bowen — moved under CPLR 3211(a)(7) to dismiss the complaint insofar as asserted against them, arguing that hostile work environment claims can only be asserted against an employer, not a labor union, because it is the employer who controls the work environment. The Supreme Court, Kings County, denied the motion. The union defendants appealed, and the New York City Central Labor Council appeared as amicus curiae.
The Court’s Holding
The Appellate Division reversed, dismissing all claims against the union defendants. The court held that since the work environment is controlled by the employer — not the union — labor unions have “no affirmative duty” to prevent harassment or discrimination in the workplace. A union’s anti-discrimination obligations arise only when it performs an agency function in a representational capacity, such as in collective bargaining or grievance proceedings.
The court reviewed the parallel anti-discrimination provisions in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the New York State Human Rights Law (Executive Law § 296[1][c]), and the New York City Human Rights Law (Administrative Code § 8-107[1][c]). While all three statutes prohibit unions from discriminating against their members in union-controlled activities, none impose on unions a duty to police the employer’s work environment. Accordingly, hostile work environment claims — inherently predicated on conduct in an employer-controlled space — do not run against labor unions under New York law.
Key Takeaways
- Under both the NYS Human Rights Law and the NYC Human Rights Law, a union cannot be held liable for a hostile work environment claim when the discrimination occurs within the employer’s workplace and the union did not itself control the environment.
- A union’s anti-discrimination obligations are triggered only when it acts in a representational capacity — in grievances, arbitration, contract negotiations, or other union-specific functions.
- Plaintiffs alleging workplace religious discrimination who seek to name a union as a co-defendant must plead specific facts showing that the union’s own representational conduct was discriminatory.
Why It Matters
This decision sets a clear boundary for employment discrimination litigation in New York: the hostile work environment theory is an employer-side claim, not a vehicle for targeting the bargaining representative. For in-house counsel at universities and other large unionized institutions, this clarifies that the legal duty to maintain a harassment-free workplace rests on the employer, not the union — even when the union is alleged to have failed to respond adequately to member complaints. For plaintiffs’ employment counsel, the lesson is to focus discrimination claims on employer conduct; naming the union will survive only if you can plead specific acts of union discrimination in a representational context.
The appearance of the NYC Central Labor Council as amicus — and the court’s decision reversing the lower court — signals that New York appellate courts are carefully limiting the scope of union liability in workplace discrimination cases to avoid converting unions into co-employers. Employment practitioners at unionized CUNY campuses and similar settings should take note of this important limitation on multi-defendant discrimination suits.