Opinion ID: 6226757
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Incidents Between Milord-Francois and Henzel

Text: Milord-Francois’s claims arise mainly from her interactions—both before and after her promotion—with Robyn Henzel, a white Senior Attorney at the office. While Milord-Francois was a Senior Attorney, Henzel once loudly asked Milord-Francois if she was “getting drugs in there?” when Milord-Francois entered a colleague’s office for an aspirin. Id. at 330. Henzel then told everyone at the office “that she was concerned about [Milord-Francois] taking drugs.” Id. Another time, during a ticker tape parade in front of the OMIG building, Henzel approached Milord-Francois “out of the blue” and said, “oh my God, your black face, your black face scares me.” Id. at 322. Lastly, Milord-Francois stated that she overheard Henzel telling other workers that she had to go to a funeral in Harlem and, if she did not return, then “they” killed her, which Milord-Francois understood to refer to black residents in Harlem. See id. at 489–90. MilordFrancois never filed a formal complaint or otherwise reported these incidents to management before her promotion. She first disclosed some of these interactions in March 2016—five months into her probationary period—when Matt Chiesa, OMIG’s Director of Labor Relations, talked to Milord-Francois as part of his investigation into a workplace violence complaint filed by a Senior Attorney against Henzel. After Milord-Francois’s promotion, her interactions with Henzel fared no better. On May 5, 2016, Henzel—whose direct supervisor at the time was Mandel—flatly refused to accept an assignment from Milord-Francois. Henzel started screaming and yelled “[y]ou shouldn’t have been an associate attorney.” Id. at 337. Shortly after, Daniels-Rivera convened a meeting with Milord-Francois and the other supervisors to discuss how the situation could have been handled differently. At that meeting, Milord-Francois told Daniels-Rivera that “there was nothing I could have done to alleviate the situation” because Henzel “calls me black face . . . [s]he called me angry face.” Id. at 333. Approximately a week later, Daniels-Rivera again met with Milord-Francois to discuss what she was doing “to fix the problem” with Henzel, to which Milord-Francois replied, “I cannot fix the problem. It is not me. . . . [T]his girl uses racial slurs towards me.” Id. at 324. According to Milord-Francois, Daniels-Rivera replied that, “as a manager, you have to accept [it]—as a manager, I have dealt with [it]. As a manager, I have experienced it. And as a manager, you have to deal with it.” Id. at 312. B. Milord-Francois’s Probation Reports and Demotion In July 2016, Daniels-Rivera drafted probation reports for Mandel and Milord-Francois, giving them both unfavorable ratings with detailed explanations of their shortcomings as managers. 2 Daniels-Rivera extended the probation period for both by a month, based on their 2 Prior to this, Daniels-Rivera had given Milord-Francois negative feedback on Milord-Francois’s work product. For example, on March 16, 2016, Daniels-Rivera replied with critiques to Milord-Francois’s March 15, 2016, email submission of a performance evaluation for one of Milord-Francois’s assigned supervisees. 3 absences and need for time to address the issues noted in the interim report. In September 2016, Daniels-Rivera issued a negative final probation report for Milord-Francois and demoted her back to Senior Attorney. The report noted that Milord-Francois failed to improve on the deficiencies raised in the July 2016 report. At the meeting where Daniels-Rivera presented the final report, Milord-Francois testified that she complained to Daniels-Rivera that, “you never told me there was anything wrong with my work.” Id. at 447. Daniels-Rivera’s reply, according to Milord-Francois, was that there was “nothing wrong with [Milord-Francois’s] work” but that Milord-Francois “wasn’t implementing [Daniels-Rivera’s] vision.” Id. at 448.