This event has completed.

10/27/2021
6:00 PM - 7:30 PM

This Event is Canceled: New Dates to Follow

NELA Nite: Second Generation Claims Panel Series: Stereotyping, Microaggression, and Tokenism Claims
October 27, 2021 - 6:00-7:30 pm
(Professional Practice CLE Credits 1.5)

Featuring The Honorable Ronald L. Ellis, Magistrate Judge, SDNY (Retired), Cyrus Dugger, William Li, and Amy Robinson

Panelists will discuss “second generation” (and third generation) discrimination claims concerning stereotyping, microaggressions, and tokenism.

What are “second generation” (or third generation) claims?

These are claims that address the more subtle and nuanced forms of discrimination that remain rampant in the 2021 workplace, but that courts have struggled to address with traditional employment discrimination legal frameworks -- particularly with respect to Title VII.  

These “second generation” (or third generation) claims are in part a response to the reality that, in the modern workplace, “clever men may easily conceal their motivations,” Vega v. Hempstead Union Free Sch. Dist., 801 F.3d 72, 86 (2d Cir. 2015), and discrimination is often largely (or entirely) subconscious.

As one court has put it, “[t]oday’s psychologically and sociologically sophisticated employers know many ways to control and shape a workforce beyond the relatively blunt instruments of firing and demotion. . . . To ignore the fact that an employer can manipulate seemingly trivial features of the workplace . . . is to blink at reality.” Bostic v. AT&T, 166 F. Supp. 2d 350, 361-62 (D.V.I. 2001) (citing Mark Barenberg, Democracy and Domination in the Law of Workplace Cooperation: From Bureaucratic to Flexible Production, 94 Colum. L. Rev. 753, 773-823 (1994); Susan Sturm, Second Generation Employment Discrimination: A Structural Approach, 101 Colum. L. Rev. 458, 460-61 (2001)).

Please join us for an important discussion on these cutting-edge issues with The Honorable Ronald L. Ellis and our additional panelists.