Have you ever wondered how a simple request for flexible work hours could lead to wrongful termination? In this gripping episode of Employee Survival Guide®, host Mark Carey dives deep into the harrowing story of Joanne Kim, a high-performing employee at Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, who faced devastating repercussions after seeking FMLA leave during a family crisis. This episode is not just a tale of one employee’s struggle; it’s a crucial examination of employment law, particularly the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
Join Mark and his insightful guest as they dissect legal documents from Kim’s lawsuit, revealing how her impressive performance metrics juxtaposed with the timeline of her termination paint a compelling picture of associational discrimination. The chilling effects of workplace culture are laid bare, showcasing how employees grappling with personal crises are often left vulnerable in hostile work environments. This episode emphasizes the critical importance of using specific legal language when reporting workplace abuse to HR, and it exposes the failures of HR departments to protect employee rights.
Listeners will gain invaluable insights into the nuances of employment law and the significance of documenting performance. This episode serves as a wake-up call for employees everywhere, urging them to understand their rights under the law and to advocate for themselves in the face of discrimination, retaliation, and workplace bullying. From severance negotiations to understanding employment contracts, Mark provides essential tips for navigating the complex landscape of employment law issues.
Whether you’re dealing with pregnancy discrimination, disability rights in the workplace, or simply seeking to improve your work-life balance, this episode is packed with practical advice and insider tips for employees. Tune in to empower yourself with knowledge, and learn how to survive and thrive in today’s challenging work culture. Don’t miss this opportunity to become your own advocate and take control of your career!
Listen now to discover how to navigate the often-treacherous waters of employment disputes and learn why understanding your rights under the FMLA can be a game-changer in your professional life. Join the conversation and equip yourself with the tools you need to survive and succeed in the workplace!
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For more information, please contact our employment attorneys at Carey & Associates, P.C. at 203-255-4150, www.capclaw.com.
Disclaimer: For educational use only, not intended to be legal advice.
Transcript:
Speaker #0
Hey, it’s Mark here, and welcome to the next edition of the Employee Survival Guide, where I tell you, as always, what your employer does definitely not want you to know about, and a lot more.
Speaker #1
So imagine this scenario. You are your top-tier performer at your company, literally building a department from scratch.
Speaker #2
Right, doing the heavy lifting.
Speaker #1
Exactly. And you’re bringing in billions. with a B for your company. You’re routinely working 14-hour days.
Speaker #2
Which is just exhausting. Yeah.
Speaker #1
Yeah, totally. You are, by every metric on paper, an absolute corporate star. But then, you know, the unthinkable happens.
Speaker #2
Right. A family crisis.
Speaker #1
Yeah. Your child attempts suicide, requiring this intense, life-altering medical intervention.
Speaker #2
Oh, wow.
Speaker #1
So you go to human resources and you’re just terrified and exhausted. You ask for a temporarily flexible schedule. So you can simply drop your child off at a medical program.
Speaker #2
A completely human request.
Speaker #1
Right. And four days later, you are fired. Your entire livelihood is just gone, effective immediately.
Speaker #2
That is just brutal.
Speaker #1
It’s terrifying. Is your employer legally allowed to view your sick child as a, quote, distraction? And if you had to find back, do you know exactly what words you needed to say to HR to actually be protected by federal law?
Speaker #2
Most people have absolutely no idea, honestly.
Speaker #1
Which is exactly why we’re here. The complex realities of the modern workplace can be terrifying, testing your resilience and the absolute limits of employment law. So welcome to another episode of the Employee Survival Guide podcast, produced by employment attorney Mark Carey.
Speaker #2
Glad to be here for this one. It’s a heavy topic.
Speaker #1
It really is. Today, we are immersing ourselves into incredibly revealing legal documents from a federal lawsuit filed in the Southern District of New York.
Speaker #2
Yeah, the Joanne Kim case.
Speaker #1
Exactly. Joanne Kim, viewer at General Pharmaceuticals. Inc. and Ashutosh Katiar.
Speaker #2
And it is a profoundly illustrative case. It really forces us to look at that massive chasm between what feels morally right in an office setting and, well, what the federal courts actually define as illegal.
Speaker #1
Right, because those are two very different things. The first document we’re unpacking is the plaintiff’s amended complaint, which was filed by her attorneys at Wigdor LLP.
Speaker #2
And complaints are always fascinating to read.
Speaker #1
Oh, totally. This document lays out. the explosive, really granular allegations of workplace retaliation from the employee’s perspective. And then the second document is the judge’s opinion and order on the defendant’s motion to dismiss.
Speaker #2
Right. Signed by senior United States District Judge Loretta A. Apreska.
Speaker #1
Yeah. So we are getting the intensely personal story followed immediately by this cold, structural legal analysis deciding which parts of that story actually survive contact with the federal judge.
Speaker #2
Before we go any further, though. We need to set the parameters for you, the listener, regarding what we’re actually analyzing here.
Speaker #1
Yeah, good point.
Speaker #2
Because in the legal world, a complaint is really just a list of allegations. It is one side of the story.
Speaker #1
We’re not looking at a final jury verdict today.
Speaker #2
Exactly. No verdict yet. When a judge rules on a motion to dismiss, standard legal procedure requires them to assume all the facts presented by the plaintiff are entirely true.
Speaker #1
Even if the company completely denies them?
Speaker #2
Right. Simply for the sake of deciding if the case has enough legal merit to… proceed to discovery. So we are analyzing these documents impartially.
Speaker #1
Not taking any sides here.
Speaker #2
Right. Not treating it as absolute truth, but as this masterclass in how discrimination, retaliation, and protected leave operate mechanically under the law.
Speaker #1
Okay. Let’s start by looking at the specific architecture of a high-achieving corporate career. Because Joanne Kim’s professional caliber is really the bedrock of this entire lawsuit.
Speaker #2
It absolutely is.
Speaker #1
According to the complaint, Kim is a doctor of pharmacy and a registered pharmacist. She built her career in hospital pharmacy, moved into pharmaceutical equity research, and healthcare consulting.
Speaker #2
She even founded her own firm, right?
Speaker #1
Yeah, Harlow Advisors.
Speaker #2
Yeah.
Speaker #1
And then Regeneron hires her in June 2020 as the Director of Customer Insights and Analytics, bringing her in to build a brand new competitive intelligence business unit from the ground up.
Speaker #2
And the complaint doesn’t just, you know, mention her title. Dedicates pages to building this impenetrable fortress around her competence.
Speaker #1
Yes, that’s exactly what I was noticing. It details her above expected performance reviews. It lists her creation of the Regeneron CI gateway.
Speaker #2
Which was a massive project.
Speaker #1
Huge. And it explicitly states she routinely worked 14 to 16 hour days. It points out her strategic work directly supported blockbuster drugs like Dupixent and Ilea.
Speaker #2
And those drugs generate. billions of dollars in revenue for the company.
Speaker #1
Billions. So if you’re listening to this, you might wonder, wait, why do lawyers spend so much expensive billable time bragging about their client’s resume in a lawsuit about being fired?
Speaker #2
It sounds like fluff, but it’s actually an essential legal strategy.
Speaker #1
It sounds like she was untouchable. Honestly, she’s the golden goose. It’s like building a championship sports team around a star player. How does someone go from being instrumental to just fired?
Speaker #2
Well, the plaintiff’s legal team is establishing what we call baseline performance.
Speaker #1
Baseline performance. OK, explain that.
Speaker #2
Think about how an employer usually defends a termination. They almost always claim the employee was fired for a legitimate, non-discriminatory business reason.
Speaker #1
Which is usually just, oh, they were bad at their job.
Speaker #2
Exactly. Poor performance. By front-loading the complaint with a mountain of documented praise, high ratings, and tangible multi-billion dollar contributions, the plaintiff preemptively destroys that excuse.
Speaker #1
They can’t just casually say she was slacking off.
Speaker #2
Right. If the employer tries to argue her work was subpar, the judge will look at this baseline and say, wait a minute, she was exceptional up until the exact moment she asked for medical leave.
Speaker #1
You need to explain this sudden shift.
Speaker #2
Precisely. You build the wall of competence so high. that any subsequent attack on her performance looks immediately suspicious to a jury.
Speaker #1
That makes total sense. And the timeline in the complaint shows a definitive shift. It notes that in August 2022, Regeneron restructured the department.
Speaker #2
Which happens all the time in pharma.
Speaker #1
Yeah. Kim was assigned to the Ilia brand, again, one of the most profitable drugs, facing massive commercial pressure from upcoming competitors. But the critical change is that she is placed under a new direct manager, Ashutosh Katiar.
Speaker #2
And that’s where the friction really starts.
Speaker #1
Right. Because her previous manager, Arvind Balasundaram, whom she had a great, really supportive relationship with, gets bumped up to be Katya’s manager.
Speaker #2
That organizational shift represents a fundamental change in the workplace ecosystem for her.
Speaker #1
Because it’s a totally different management style.
Speaker #2
Exactly. You transition from a manager who understood her holistic value and her personal situation to one who, according to the allegations anyway, Views her strictly through the lens of daily output and his own managerial convenience.
Speaker #1
And that personal situation is really the catalyst for everything that follows. We need to introduce Kim’s young daughter, who we’ll call Jane, for this discussion.
Speaker #2
Right.
Speaker #1
The complaint describes Jane as severely disabled, suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder, ADHD, trichotillomania, and general anxiety disorder.
Speaker #2
It’s a lot for any family to manage.
Speaker #1
It really is. The realities described in these documents are just horrifying for any parent to imagine. Instances of self-harm, suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, and inpatient hospital stays.
Speaker #2
Yeah, Jane requires special schools and intensive, constant treatment.
Speaker #1
From a legal standpoint, why put all those very personal medical details into a public lawsuit?
Speaker #2
Laying out the severity of Jane’s conditions establishes that she possesses impairments that substantially limit major life activities.
Speaker #1
Okay, that sounds like very specific legal phrasing.
Speaker #2
It is. That is the exact legal threshold required to meet the definition of a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Speaker #1
So they are checking a very necessary legal box right there. Now, Kim had routinely kept her former manager, Balasandaram, updated on Jane’s health, and he was incredibly supportive. But when Katia takes over, the environment just chills.
Speaker #2
Right. The dynamic changes instantly.
Speaker #1
Kim tells Katia about her daughter, explaining why she might need to occasionally reschedule a meeting. He acknowledges it. But there is no warmth or support described in the complaint.
Speaker #2
Just strictly business.
Speaker #1
Yeah. Then, in mid-June 2023, the friction between Kim’s life and Katya’s management style just ignites. Kim breaks her hand.
Speaker #2
A physical injury on top of everything else.
Speaker #1
Right. And it’s severe enough that it has to be immobilized for six weeks, requiring a six-week medical leave. Regeneron rightfully informs her this is a qualifying event under the Family and Medical Leave Act, the FMLA.
Speaker #2
And just to clarify for everyone, the FMLA is a bedrock federal law. It guarantees eligible employees up to 12 weeks of unpaid job protected leave for specified family and medical reasons.
Speaker #1
So it’s designed precisely for moments like a broken bone.
Speaker #2
Exactly. Or a severe illness.
Speaker #1
But Katiar’s reaction to her exercising this federal right is, frankly, unhinged, according to the complaint.
Speaker #2
It’s pretty extreme.
Speaker #1
He panics. He openly complains to others that her leave. Places a massive burden on him. To cover the work of this one woman for six weeks, he allegedly hires two outside consultants on three-month contracts.
Speaker #2
Which tells you how much work she was actually doing.
Speaker #1
Right. Two people to cover one person’s temporary absence. And when Kim returns in July 2023, he allegedly lashes out. The complaint states he berated her, screamed at her, and pounded his fists on the table so violently she feared for her physical safety.
Speaker #2
And he called her work useless, right?
Speaker #1
Yeah. Called her work useless. Let me stop and analyze this, because if you were listening to this, you’re probably thinking, wait, she had a cast on her hand. She took federally protected FMLA leave.
Speaker #2
Right.
Speaker #1
Why would a manager at a highly sophisticated, publicly traded pharmaceutical company react with such explosive hostility to an employee using a federally protected right? It just seems legally suicidal.
Speaker #2
It does seem insane, but it happens constantly. And it highlights this intense psychological disconnect between corporate urgency and federal law.
Speaker #1
What do you mean by that?
Speaker #2
Well, the FMLA clearly states an employer cannot interfere with, restrain or deny the exercise of any right provided by the act. nor can they retaliate.
Speaker #1
Pretty clear cut.
Speaker #2
On paper, yes. But a mid-level manager on the ground doesn’t usually think about federal statutes. They think about their quarterly targets, their launch deadlines, and their own performance bonuses.
Speaker #1
So they just see a roadblock to their own goals.
Speaker #2
Exactly. When a highly productive employee vanishes for six weeks, the manager feels intense operational pain. The failure here, the legally radioactive failure, is that the manager expressed that frustration by punishing the employee upon her return.
Speaker #1
Right. The screaming and the fist pounding.
Speaker #2
Showing direct aggressive anger explicitly because someone took medical leave is basically handing the plaintiff a retaliation claim on a silver platter.
Speaker #1
It creates a paper trail of anger.
Speaker #2
It establishes a direct line of animus between the protected activity and the manager’s hostility.
Speaker #1
And that hostility fundamentally breaks the trust. Kim is now terrified of her boss. And this leads us to what is arguably the most systemic failure alleged in this entire lawsuit.
Speaker #2
The HR department.
Speaker #1
Yes, the behavior of human resources. There is a pattern here of HR functioning like a black hole for employee rights. Let’s rewind slightly to March 2023, a few months before she broke her hand.
Speaker #2
Right, before the FMLA leave.
Speaker #1
Jane, the daughter, was hospitalized for a suicide attempt. Kim went directly to Dana Jones in HR, disclosed the intensive psychiatric treatment her daughter required, and explicitly asked about available medical leave options.
Speaker #2
She went right to the source for help.
Speaker #1
Yes. But according to the complaint, HR never informed Kim of her right to take FMLA leave to care for her daughter.
Speaker #2
And this is a critical mechanism in employment law regarding an employer’s affirmative duty.
Speaker #1
Affirmative duty, meaning they have to do something proactively.
Speaker #2
Exactly. The law does not require you, the employee, to possess a law degree. You do not have to walk into an HR office and declare, I hereby invoke my rights under the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993.
Speaker #1
You literally just have to say, My child is in the hospital and I need to be there.
Speaker #2
Precisely. Once you provide enough factual information to put the employer on notice that your situation might qualify for FMLA, the legal burden shifts entirely to the employer.
Speaker #1
Wow. OK.
Speaker #2
HR has an affirmative legal obligation to trigger the FMLA protocols, ask clarifying questions if needed, and specifically notify you of your eligibility and your rights.
Speaker #1
So if they just sit there and nod.
Speaker #2
When HR remains silent, withholding that information… It can legally constitute interference with your FMLA rights.
Speaker #1
That is huge. And we see this exact same interference happen again. In September 2023, after Katya’s screaming fit over her broken hand, Kim’s daughter needs to be enrolled in an out-of-state medical program.
Speaker #2
Another qualifying event.
Speaker #1
Yes. Kim goes to Dana Jones in HR a second time. She explains the situation in detail and says she will need time off. Again, HR offers no FMLA paperwork.
Speaker #2
More silence.
Speaker #1
And this is where the human cost of this legal failure becomes devastating. Because Kim remembers Katya pounding his fists on the table. And because HR offers no official protection, she decides out of fear not to take the leave.
Speaker #2
She just absorbs the burden herself.
Speaker #1
Exactly. Instead, she pays entirely out of pocket to hire a full-time private health care practitioner for her daughter. She sacrifices her right to be by her child’s side because she’s terrified her boss will destroy her career.
Speaker #2
What you were describing is the textbook definition of the chilling effect.
Speaker #1
The chilling effect.
Speaker #2
Yes. Employment law recognizes that retaliation doesn’t just mean getting fired. When an employer’s actions, or in HR’s case, their deliberate inaction, creates an environment so hostile that it deters a reasonable person from exercising their legal rights.
Speaker #1
That in itself is a violation.
Speaker #2
Right. That is a form of interference and retaliation. The damage to the employee is done even if they remain on the payroll.
Speaker #1
Man, that’s heavy. And Katya’s simmering hostility just keeps building. In December 2023, Kim catches COVID for the second time and takes a mere two sick days.
Speaker #2
Just two days.
Speaker #1
When she returns, Katya snidely remarks, quote, so interesting that you caught COVID again, heavily implying she is lying to get out of work.
Speaker #2
Over two days of sick leave.
Speaker #1
Right. And when she calmly explains that she has young kids in school and viruses spread, he just says, sure, and walks away, visibly enraged.
Speaker #2
It establishes a documented pattern for the lawsuit. It’s no longer one bad day where a manager lost his temper.
Speaker #1
It’s a sustained attitude.
Speaker #2
Exactly. A targeted managerial attitude that views any illness or family care not as a human reality, but as a personal affront to his authority and a performance failure.
Speaker #1
Which brings us to January 24, 2024. The boiling point. Kim and Katya are in a one-on-one meeting. Ever since her broken hand, Katya had been actively excluding her from stakeholder meetings that were essential for her to do her job.
Speaker #2
Freezing her out.
Speaker #1
Yeah. So she politely asked to be included again. Katya’s response is aggressive and incredibly revealing. He tells her point blank she will never be promoted from her current position.
Speaker #2
He just shuts her down completely.
Speaker #1
He diminishes her entire career and has been falsely claiming her role is just a, quote, technical function. And then he delivers the quote that anchors the entire discrimination complaint.
Speaker #2
This is a really important moment.
Speaker #1
He says to her, it’s all about what perceptions you create to people. He proceeds to lecture her on her behavior, team dynamics and collaboration. Let’s pause and dissect this word perceptions.
Speaker #2
Oh, it’s a loaded.
Speaker #1
Because to anyone who has ever worked in a corporate environment, this sounds like pure coded language. It’s like when management tells someone you’re not a culture fit.
Speaker #2
Right. It can mean almost anything.
Speaker #1
What they actually mean is you taking time off for your disabled kid makes me look bad, but I can’t legally say that. So I’m going to attack your quote unquote vibe. Kim felt it was an obvious, thinly veiled attack on her caregiving duties.
Speaker #2
And she is very likely right about the subtext. But this is where we have to examine how federal courts interpret coded language versus direct evidence.
Speaker #1
They see it differently than we do in everyday life, I imagine.
Speaker #2
Very differently. In litigation, subjective interpretation without concrete, objective proof is a massive hurdle. A plaintiff will argue that perceptions is a dog whistle for the stigma attached to working mothers with disabled children.
Speaker #1
Which makes sense to anyone listening.
Speaker #2
But the defense will argue that perceptions refers entirely to her professional demeanor, her communication style, or her punctuality.
Speaker #1
They just flip the definition.
Speaker #2
Right. Because the manager didn’t say, mothers are too distracted to be promoted, which would be direct. undeniable evidence. The vague nature of the word perceptions leaves a loophole for the employer to deny discriminatory intent.
Speaker #1
So even if everyone in the room knows exactly what the code means, the law requires a higher standard of proof.
Speaker #2
Exactly. It’s frustrating, but it’s how the courts operate.
Speaker #1
Kim leaves this meeting completely destabilized. The very next day, January 25th, she makes a move that springs the trap. She reports Katya to Dana Jones in HR.
Speaker #2
She’s escalating it.
Speaker #1
She is. desperately seeking a lifeline. She tells Jones that a senior leader has been verbally abusive and threatening. She admits she is terrified for her job and just wants to take baby steps to understand her options before filing a massive formal complaint.
Speaker #2
She’s being very cautious.
Speaker #1
Yeah. She literally tells HR, I am so upset by this person and how unprofessional this person was and made me feel so invalidated, feel so small, like I am worth nothing.
Speaker #2
That’s a very raw emotional plea for help.
Speaker #1
It is. I want to look closely at how HR reacts here because it is shocking. Data Jones responds by saying that if Kim doesn’t want to name the person right now, and she feels like maybe this is not the right fit for me anymore, HR could probably put together some type of package for you.
Speaker #2
The package.
Speaker #1
An employee comes in saying she’s being abused and feels worthless, and HR’s immediate reflex is to offer her severance to go away.
Speaker #2
It perfectly illustrates the true function of human resources in many large corporations. It really helps to think of HR as the corporate immune system.
Speaker #1
The immune system. How so?
Speaker #2
When an employee comes in complaining about an abusive manager, the system does not necessarily recognize the abusive manager as the virus. The system recognizes the employee’s potential lawsuit as the virus. Oh,
Speaker #1
wow. So she’s the threat.
Speaker #2
Right. The company’s primary goal is risk mitigation. Offering a severance package, which always requires the employee to sign a nondisclosure agreement and release of all legal claims, is the white blood cell identifying a threat and attempting to isolate and expel it as quickly and quietly as possible.
Speaker #1
That is so dark.
Speaker #2
It is devastating to the employee seeking help. But from a purely clinical corporate defense standpoint, it is highly efficient.
Speaker #1
But Kim refuses the package. She says she loves her job, she is dedicated to the company, and she has no desire to quit.
Speaker #2
Good for her.
Speaker #1
A week later, on February 1st, she finally names Katya in a meeting with Jones. But she is also dealing with an emergent crisis. Jane’s condition has worsened.
Speaker #2
It’s all happening at once.
Speaker #1
Yeah. She requires a higher level of care and needs to be dropped off and picked up at specific rigid times for a new medical program. Kim, acting as the primary caretaker, tells HR, I can’t do this myself anymore. It’s too much.
Speaker #2
She’s hitting a breaking point.
Speaker #1
She explicitly asks for temporary flexibility in her daily schedule to accommodate these drop-offs.
Speaker #2
At this point, Jones legally recognizes the request. She informs Kerr about the company’s accommodation process and mentions needing a tracker for her hours.
Speaker #1
Right. But then HR makes a move that seems completely indefensible. Kim reminds Jones that she is terrified of Katya. She reminds her of the screaming, the fist pounding, and the retaliation from her last medical leave.
Speaker #2
She’s saying, please don’t make me deal with him.
Speaker #1
Exactly. She says her hands are tied. And Jones responds by making excuses for Katya, saying he just expressed himself in a, quote, really bad way. Then Jones instructs Kim that she must email Katya directly to ask for this flexible schedule.
Speaker #2
That is just terrible HR practice.
Speaker #1
Wait, let me make sure I understand the mechanics of this. HR is supposed to mediate risk, right? But here, HR is intentionally forcing a terrified employee to go back into the line of fire and ask her abuser for a favor. Why would HR do that?
Speaker #2
It is a profound failure of process. Ideally, HR should act as a buffer, especially when abuse or retaliation has been alleged.
Speaker #1
Right, they should step in.
Speaker #2
By forcing the employee to make the request directly to the hostile manager, HR is essentially washing its hands of the conflict. and placing the burden entirely back on the vulnerable employee.
Speaker #1
So King does what she is told. On February 5th, she sends a highly professional email to Katya. She asks for support and flexibility for the next six to eight weeks.
Speaker #2
She even promises to get all the work done right.
Speaker #1
Yes, she promises to work non-traditional hours to ensure every single task is completed and reiterates her deep commitment to the team. Four days later, February 9th.
Speaker #2
Here it comes.
Speaker #1
Katya and Jones call Kim. while she is literally sitting in a doctor’s waiting room for her daughter’s appointment. They fire her, effective immediately.
Speaker #2
While she’s at the doctor’s office?
Speaker #1
Yes. If you are listening, you have to be asking, how does a massive corporation fire someone four days after they ask for a medical accommodation and not immediately realize they are buying a massive lawsuit?
Speaker #2
The timeline you just described is known in employment law as temporal proximity, and it is one of the most powerful weapons a plaintiff has.
Speaker #1
Temporal proximity.
Speaker #2
Yeah. You can think of temporal proximity as a fading radioactive isotope. If you request an accommodation on Monday and get fired on Friday, a four-day gap, that timeline is glowing bright red with radiation.
Speaker #1
It’s impossible to ignore.
Speaker #2
It is a smoking gun that practically forces a judge to infer a causal connection. If the gap is four months, the radiation has faded. It’s weak circumstantial evidence.
Speaker #1
And if it’s like a year?
Speaker #2
If the gap is 14 months, it’s legally invisible. But four days. At the pleading stage, four days is more than enough to establish a plausible claim of retaliation.
Speaker #1
And the excuse the company provided makes it even worse. Katya claimed her role was being eliminated due to the departmental reorganization.
Speaker #2
A classic corporate excuse.
Speaker #1
Right. But Kim alleges that they kept her entire team intact and simply hired outside consultants to perform her exact duties. Furthermore, when she asked Jones to be transferred to a different open role within the company. Jones claimed there was a company-wide hiring pause.
Speaker #2
Which brings us to the crucial legal concept of pretext.
Speaker #1
Pretext, meaning a lie.
Speaker #2
Basically, yes. Pretext is a fabricated reason designed to conceal the true, discriminatory, or retaliatory motive behind an action. In a lawsuit, if the plaintiff can demonstrate that the employer’s official excuse is riddled with contradictions, illogical statements, or outright lies, it acts as a massive multiplier for their case.
Speaker #1
So the consultants proved the lie.
Speaker #2
Exactly. If you tell an employee you are eliminating their role to save the company money, but then you immediately spend money to hire consultants to do the exact same work, a judge or jury is going to look at that math and conclude your excuse is false. You didn’t want to eliminate the role. You specifically wanted to eliminate this person.
Speaker #1
So the trap snaps shut. Kim is fired and she files this massive federal lawsuit. The defendants, Regeneron and Katya, fight back instantly. They don’t even file a standard answer to the complaint. They go straight for the jugular with a motion to dismiss.
Speaker #2
Right. They try to kill it immediately.
Speaker #1
This transitions us entirely from the emotional reality of the workplace into the cold structural reality of a federal judge’s chamber. We are now looking at Judge Loretta A. Preska’s ruling. Can you explain how a Rule 12b6 motion to dismiss actually functions? Because it sounds like a legal cheat code to kill a lawsuit before it even begins.
Speaker #2
It is the first major defensive wall in federal civil litigation. A Rule 12b-6 asserts that the plaintiff has failed to state a claim upon which relief can be granted.
Speaker #1
So they’re saying she has no case.
Speaker #2
Right. And at this specific moment in the timeline, zero discovery has occurred. Nobody has been placed under oath for a deposition. No internal corporate emails or Slack messages have been subpoenaed.
Speaker #1
It’s just her word against theirs.
Speaker #2
The judge is absolutely blind to the actual evidence. Therefore, the rules require the judge to assume that every single horrific thing Joanne Kim alleges in her complaint is 100 percent factual.
Speaker #1
OK, so the judge says, let’s pretend all of this is true.
Speaker #2
Exactly. The judge is essentially asking a theoretical question, assuming everything this employee says is true. Do these events actually violate a law? If the conduct described is terrible, but not technically illegal, the case is dismissed and thrown out of court.
Speaker #1
It’s the ultimate test of. Is this a federal crime or is your boss just a terrible human being? Because being a terrible person isn’t against the law.
Speaker #2
Precisely. And to structure this analysis, courts rely on the McDonnell Douglas prima facie case named after a landmark Supreme Court decision.
Speaker #1
McDonnell Douglas. How does that work?
Speaker #2
Think of this framework as a highly formalized tennis match. Direct evidence of discrimination, like a boss sending an email saying, I am firing you because you are a woman, is incredibly rare.
Speaker #1
Right. Nobody’s that stupid, usually.
Speaker #2
The Supreme Court recognized this, so they created a framework to prove discrimination circumstantially. First, the employee serves the ball. They have to show they belong to protected class, they were qualified for the job, they were fired, and the context suggests discrimination.
Speaker #1
Okay, and if they do that?
Speaker #2
If they do that, the ball goes over the net. Now the employer has to hit it back by providing a legitimate, non-discriminatory reason for the firing. All right. We reorganize the department.
Speaker #1
The pretext we talked about.
Speaker #2
Right. Finally, the ball comes back to the employee who must prove that the employer’s excuse is a pretext, a lie. At the motion to dismiss stage, the employee just needs to show they have enough plausible facts to step onto the court and serve that first ball.
Speaker #1
Which takes us to the judge’s specific rulings on the claims. Let’s look at the Americans with Disabilities Act, the ADA. Yeah. Kim claimed she was directly discriminated against because of her own disabilities. Specifically. The broken hand that immobilized her for six weeks and her two bouts of COVID. I was stunned by this part of the ruling.
Speaker #2
A lot of people are surprised by this.
Speaker #1
The judge threw those direct ADA claims out entirely. The judge declared that a broken bone requiring six weeks of recovery and a standard COVID infection are, quote, too brief and too minor to legally qualify as disabilities under the ADA.
Speaker #2
Yeah, that’s standard ADA interpretation.
Speaker #1
Furthermore, the judge stated that even if they were disabilities, Katya’s explosive anger was directed at her taking leave generally, not an animus against disabled people specifically. I have to challenge this logic on behalf of anyone listening. A broken bone isn’t a disability. She physically could not use her hand.
Speaker #2
I know. It sounds ridiculous.
Speaker #1
It feels like the ADA operates a VIP club and temporary agonizing injuries are bouncing off the velvet rope.
Speaker #2
It feels incredibly restrictive to a layperson. Absolutely. But we must examine the specific mechanics of the statutory language. The ADA does not protect. all medical conditions. It specifically defines a disability as a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities. Over decades of case law, federal courts have rigidly interpreted substantially limits to explicitly exclude transitory temporary ailments where a full, relatively rapid recovery is expected.
Speaker #1
So because the hand will heal in two months, it doesn’t count.
Speaker #2
Exactly. A broken bone that takes six to eight weeks to heal is classified as a temporary impairment. The same logic applies to a standard bout of COVID-19 or the flu. The ADA was architected by Congress to protect individuals with chronic, long-term, or permanent impairments from systemic lifelong discrimination.
Speaker #1
Because of the long haul.
Speaker #2
Right. It was never intended to act as a universal shield for every seasonal illness or temporary orthopedic injury.
Speaker #1
And then there’s the nexus issue. The judge pointed out that even if we pretend her broken hand was a disability, Kim didn’t prove Katia hated her because she was disabled.
Speaker #2
Exactly. To succeed on an ADA discrimination claim, you must establish causality. You have to prove you were fired because of your disability. If a manager violently hates anyone who takes time off work, whether they are taking a vacation to Italy, caring for a sick parent, or getting knee surgery, that manager is toxic. But they are not necessarily discriminating against disabled people as a class.
Speaker #1
They just hate people not working.
Speaker #2
The legal animus must be surgically directed at the protected characteristic. Because the complaint did not allege that Katiar made derogatory remarks about disabled people specifically, or that he treated non-disabled people better when they took time off, the direct ADA claim collapses.
Speaker #1
But right when it looks like the case is falling apart, we get a massive legal plot twist.
Speaker #0
While Kim’s own physical injuries aren’t protected under the ADA, her relationship with her daughter saves the entire federal lawsuit.
Speaker #1
Yes, this is a brilliant use of the law.
Speaker #0
This brings us to a concept called associational discrimination.
Speaker #1
Associational discrimination is a vital yet frequently overlooked mechanism within the ADA. The statute explicitly prohibits an employer from excluding or denying equal jobs or benefits to a qualified individual. because of the known disability of someone they have a relationship or association with.
Speaker #0
So it’s protecting the people who care for the disabled.
Speaker #1
Exactly. It is the legal shield designed specifically to protect the caregivers.
Speaker #0
The judge’s opinion outlines three distinct, recognized theories for how associational discrimination happens, citing a Second Circuit case called Graziadio v. Culinary Institute of America.
Speaker #1
A very famous case in the circuit.
Speaker #0
I’d love for you to break those three theories down because they are fascinating.
Speaker #1
Absolutely. The courts recognize that employers discriminate against caregivers for very specific, predictable reasons. The first theory is expense.
Speaker #0
Expense meaning health insurance.
Speaker #1
Yes. This occurs when an employer fires an employee because the employee’s disabled dependent is covered by the company’s health insurance plan. And the employer calculates, rightly or wrongly, that treating the dependent will cost the company too much money and drive up premiums.
Speaker #0
Wow. And the second one?
Speaker #1
The second theory is disability by association. This happens when the employer terminates an employee out of fear that the employee might contract the contagious disease of the person they associate with or because the employer fears the employee is genetically predisposed to develop the same condition.
Speaker #0
So firing someone because their partner has HIV or because their parent has Huntington’s disease.
Speaker #1
Precisely. And the third theory is distraction.
Speaker #0
Distraction.
Speaker #1
This applies when the employer terminates the employee because the employer fears the employee will be inattentive at work. or require too much time away due to the intense demands of caring for the disabled person.
Speaker #0
And that third theory, the distraction theory, fits Joanne Kim’s case perfectly.
Speaker #1
Like a glove.
Speaker #0
She literally sat in an HR office and said, I need temporary flexibility in my hours to drop my disabled daughter off at a medical program. And four days later, she was fired.
Speaker #1
The timeline is everything.
Speaker #0
The judge ruled that this incredibly tight four-day timeline is legally sufficient to suggest the company terminated her you because they feared her child would permanently distract her from her corporate duties.
Speaker #1
The radioactive isotope of temporal proximity saves the day. Four days is practically instantaneous in corporate time.
Speaker #0
Too fast to be a coincidence.
Speaker #1
When you combine that smoking gun timeline with the fact that the company’s stated reason for firing her, eliminating the role, looks like a transparent pretext because they immediately hired consultants, the judge determines that the plaintiff has successfully stated a plausible claim for associational discrimination.
Speaker #0
So the ball is over the net.
Speaker #1
The ball is over the net.
Speaker #0
There is another incredible legal nuance here regarding her ADA retaliation claim, which the judge also allowed to survive. Regeneron tried a very specific defense. They argued that under the law, the ADA does not actually require an employer to provide a reasonable accommodation to an employee so they can care for a disabled family member.
Speaker #1
Which is technically true.
Speaker #0
Right. They only legally have to accommodate the employee’s own disability. So So Regeneron’s lawyers argued, look, we had no legal obligation to grant her a flexible schedule for her daughter. Therefore, firing her for asking for it isn’t retaliation.
Speaker #1
It’s a clever argument.
Speaker #0
But the judge completely rejected that logic.
Speaker #1
And this is a foundational lesson for both employees and HR departments. The judge separated the request from the entitlement.
Speaker #0
OK, unpack that.
Speaker #1
Whether or not the employer is legally obligated to grant the accommodation is completely. completely irrelevant to whether the employee is legally protected when they ask for it.
Speaker #0
Oh, that’s fascinating.
Speaker #1
The law explicitly states that making a good faith request for an accommodation is a protected activity. Even if the employee is legally incorrect and the company has no obligation to change their schedule, the employer is strictly forbidden from retaliating against them simply for raising the question.
Speaker #0
As you can always ask.
Speaker #1
An employer has the right to say no to the flexible schedule. They do not have the right to fire you for asking.
Speaker #0
Wow. So the ADA associational claims survive the motion to dismiss. But then the judge pivots and completely dismantles Kim’s Title VII claims and her city sick leave claims.
Speaker #1
This is where it gets really strict.
Speaker #0
Title VII is the bedrock civil rights act of 1964. It prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. Kim’s lawyers argue that she suffered sex discrimination. specifically relying on the stereotype of women as primary caregivers.
Speaker #1
A very common argument.
Speaker #0
But the judge dismissed this claim entirely. Why? Because the complaint failed to allege that men, or women without children, were treated any better by Katya. There were no explicit sexist comments on the record.
Speaker #1
It comes back to the rigorous pleading standards of Title VII. It is an incredibly powerful law, but it demands specificity. You must show that the hostile treatment was directly because of your protected class. In this case, sex.
Speaker #0
You can’t just guess it was sexism.
Speaker #1
Right. To prove that circumstantially, courts usually require what we call a comparator. A comparator is a similarly situated employee of a different class. For example, a male manager who also took time off to care for a sick child, but was treated well by Contiart.
Speaker #0
So you had to prove he treated men better.
Speaker #1
If you don’t have a comparator and you don’t have direct evidence like the boss saying working mothers belong at home, the court refuses to blindly assume the manager’s hostility was motivated by sexism. The law assumes the manager might just be a universally toxic tyrant to everyone.
Speaker #0
And her Title VII retaliation claim fails for a similar reason. Which leads us to what I consider the absolute most important takeaway of this entire lawsuit.
Speaker #1
Magic words.
Speaker #0
Yes, the magic words. When Joanne Kim complained to Dana Jones in HR, she used words like unprofessional, abusive, and said she felt invalidated and small. Because she didn’t explicitly say to HR that Katya was being sexist, the judge ruled that her complaint was not a protected activity under Title VII.
Speaker #1
This breaks my heart, but legally it’s correct.
Speaker #0
I want to spend a few minutes dissecting this because this is a trap that catches thousands of employees. If you are a mother asking for flexibility for your sick child, doesn’t human resources possess the basic common sense to know that is intricately related to your sex and caregiver status?
Speaker #1
You would think so.
Speaker #0
Why does an employee in the midst of a panic attack have to spell it out like a seasoned litigator just to get basic protection from retaliation?
Speaker #1
The frustration you are expressing is universal, but the federal courts have drawn a severe, uncompromising line on this issue. The fundamental rule you must understand is this. Unfair, abusive treatment in the workplace is not automatically illegal discrimination.
Speaker #0
That is so hard to swallow.
Speaker #1
It is. To trigger the anti-retaliation force field of federal civil rights laws, your complaint to your employer must explicitly put them on notice that you are accusing them of violating those specific laws.
Speaker #0
So vague complaints don’t work.
Speaker #1
A generic complaint about a toxic boss, or a manager being unprofessional, or even an environment being abusive. Offers you absolutely zero legal protection under Title VII.
Speaker #0
Let’s role play this so anyone listening knows exactly how to navigate this. If I go to HR and say, my boss is a bully, he screams at me, he creates a hostile work environment, and I can’t sleep at night. What happens?
Speaker #1
Legally speaking, nothing happens. You have complained about a personality conflict or bad management.
Speaker #0
Even if I say hostile work environment.
Speaker #1
The phrase hostile work environment is thrown around casually by everyone, but in a courtroom, it requires the hostility to be based on a protected class. If you just complain about bullying and they fire you the next day, you have no Title VII retaliation claim.
Speaker #0
OK, so what is the correct way? What are the magic words?
Speaker #1
You must explicitly anchor the abuse to your protected characteristic. You have to say, I believe my manager is targeting me, acting aggressively. and creating a hostile work environment because of my status as a female caregiver, or because of my race, or because of my age.
Speaker #0
You literally have to connect the dots for them.
Speaker #1
The employer must know undeniably that you are raising a civil rights issue. If you fail to use the magic words, the court will rule that you are simply complaining about poor management practices, which federal law does not regulate.
Speaker #0
That is a harsh, brutal reality. If you don’t know the exact phrasing, you are completely unprotected.
Speaker #1
Yes.
Speaker #0
The judge also dismissed her claim under ESTA, the Earned Safe and Sick Time Act. The reasoning here is purely procedural but important. The city recently added a private right of action to this law, meaning an individual citizen could finally sue their employer over it.
Speaker #1
Right. Before that, only the city could enforce it.
Speaker #0
Exactly. That amendment passed in March 2024. But Joanne Kim was fired a month earlier, in February 2024. The judge ruled that the new law couldn’t be applied to her case.
Speaker #1
It is… based on the legal presumption against retroactivity.
Speaker #0
Meaning you can’t punish someone for something that wasn’t illegal yet.
Speaker #1
Both the United States Supreme Court and the New York Court of Appeals strictly hold that a legislature cannot increase a party’s legal liability for past conduct after the fact. Individuals and corporations have a constitutional right to know what the law is at the exact moment they act so they can conform their behavior to it.
Speaker #0
So she just missed the window.
Speaker #1
Because the city council did not explicitly state that the amendment was retroactive, it only applies to employers who violate the law after the date it was officially enacted.
Speaker #0
So Kim loses the direct ADA claims, all the Title VII claims and the ESTA claim. But we arrive at the ultimate safety net of this case.
Speaker #1
The local laws.
Speaker #0
The state and city laws, specifically the New York State Human Rights Law, the NYSHRL and the New York City Human Rights Law. the NYCHRL. The judge allows Kim’s discrimination and retaliation claims under these local laws to survive against Regeneron.
Speaker #1
Which is huge.
Speaker #0
But crucially, overwhelmingly importantly, the judge allows these claims to survive against Ashutosh Katiar personally.
Speaker #1
This represents a massive divergence from federal law.
Speaker #0
Wait, I can sue my boss personally.
Speaker #1
Under federal statutes like Title VII or the ADA, you generally cannot sue your individual manager. The liability stops with the corporate entity. You sue the company. But New York state and city laws contain a provision known as ater and abetter liability.
Speaker #0
Ater and abetter. That sounds like you are charging an accomplice in a bank robbery.
Speaker #1
The mechanism operates very similarly. While an individual mid-level manager isn’t the employer in the legal corporate sense, New York law dictates that managers can be sued in their individual personal capacity if they actively participate in the discriminatory conduct.
Speaker #0
So Katya is on the hook.
Speaker #1
This means the manager’s personal assets, their bank accounts, their home could theoretically be on the line because Katya was the specific individual who yelled at her, denied her access to meetings and ultimately executed her termination four days after her accommodation request. He actively participated.
Speaker #0
He didn’t just watch it happen.
Speaker #1
Right. He aided and abetted Regeneron’s alleged associational discrimination.
Speaker #0
And my understanding is that the standard of proof. For an employee to win under the city law is much lower than the federal standard. Is that right?
Speaker #1
Significantly lower. Following major legislative amendments in 2019, the NYCHRL and recently the state law as well, were deliberately stripped of the severe restrictive federal standards.
Speaker #0
So it’s easier to prove.
Speaker #1
A plaintiff in New York City no longer has to satisfy the strict McDonnell-Douglas framework in the same rigid way. They essentially just have to demonstrate that they were treated less well than other employees. because of their membership in a protected class.
Speaker #0
Just less well. That’s a huge difference.
Speaker #1
It is a uniquely liberal pleading standard. Because Joanne Kim’s federal ADA associational claim was strong enough to survive the strict federal test, the judge ruled it automatically survives the much more lenient state and city tests.
Speaker #0
So Katziar remains personally liable, and Regeneron is facing federal FMLA interference, federal ADA associational discrimination, and state and city human rights violations.
Speaker #1
They’re definitely not out of the woods.
Speaker #0
They won some procedural victories in the motion to dismiss, but the absolute core of Joanne Kim’s lawsuit is alive and moving forward into the brutal, expensive phase of discovery.
Speaker #1
The fun part.
Speaker #0
The internal emails will be pulled. The depositions will be taken under oath. This has been a marathon exploration of legal strategy, corporate psychology and human vulnerability.
Speaker #1
It really has.
Speaker #0
If we synthesize this down to the ultimate takeaways for you, the listener, a few things are undeniable. First. documentation is your absolute best defense. The fact that Kim possessed documented above expected performance reviews and a record of 14-hour days is the only reason she could overcome the company’s inevitable excuse of poor performance.
Speaker #1
You have to keep the receipts.
Speaker #0
Second, the fading radiation of temporal proximity can save your lawsuit. The razor-thin four-day timeline between asking for an accommodation and being fired was the smoking gun that kept her case alive in federal court.
Speaker #1
Timing is everything in these cases. And the third, perhaps most vital lesson for anyone navigating the corporate landscape, when you report abuse to human resources, complaining about toxicity is legally meaningless.
Speaker #0
Say it again for the people in the back.
Speaker #1
You must use the magic words. You must explicitly tie the hostile behavior to your protected class, your race, your sex, your disability, or your caregiver status. The law does not reward implications. It demands undeniable specificity.
Speaker #0
You truly have to understand the invisible mechanics of the law to survive the workplace, which leaves me with a final, somewhat unsettling thought for you to carry with you.
Speaker #1
What’s that?
Speaker #0
If a massive, incredibly sophisticated organization can look at an employee’s intense, grueling dedication to their disabled child and view it not as a testament to their profound resilience and character, but merely as a tactical weakness or an operational distraction, what does that actually reveal about the true you Hidden cost of climbing the corporate ladder.
Speaker #1
It’s a dark thought.
Speaker #0
And more chillingly, if the legal system only extends its protection to those who have the specialized knowledge to say the precise magic words to HR, how many silent, devastating struggles go completely unpunished in cubicles and home offices every single day?
Speaker #1
Too many to count.
Speaker #0
Thank you so much for joining us for this conversation. We hope it provided you with clarity, a deeper strategic understanding, and a lot to think about regarding your own rights. See you next time.
Speaker #2
If you like the Employee Survival Guide, I’d really encourage you to leave a review. We try really hard to produce information to you that’s informative, that’s timely, that you can actually use and solve problems on your own and at your employment. So if you’d like to leave a review anywhere you listen to our podcast, please do so. And leave five stars because anything less than five is really not as good, right? I’ll keep it up. I’ll keep the standards up. I’ll keep the information flowing at you. If you’d like to send me an email and ask me a question. I’ll actually review it and post it on there. You can send it to mcarey@capclaw.com. That’s CAPCLaw.com.