Cases & Developments

Decision and Order granting-in-part and denying-in-part Defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment.  Plaintiff, a former professor of education and part-time archivist at D’Youville College who is a member of the Grey Nuns of the Sacred Heart and worked at the College since 1981, brought discrimination and retaliation claims against the College after it eliminated her positions citing declining enrollments.  Plaintiff’s age discrimination claim failed because she failed to show that the College’s asserted enrollment decreases in its Education Department programs were pretextual or that decisions she alleged the College made to bring about those decreases were made with the intent to discriminate against her.  The court, however, denied summary judgment on her claim as to her archivist position, finding a material question as to how the cited enrollment declines affected the archivist position housed in the library and a factual dispute as to whether a College official ever stated “the nun has to go.”  Her claim that the College retaliated against her when it did not investigate her complaints to the Board of Trustees about her termination failed because those complaints were subsequent to her termination and did not inhibit her from filing a claim with the State Division of Human Rights.