A five-judge panel from a Manhattan appeals court was split on what constitutes workplace discrimination under New York City’s broadly protective Human Rights Law, with the majority finding for a woman who alleges that her boss made her life at work miserable after she rebuffed his sexual advances.  

The majority of the Appellate Division, First Department panel agreed that a trial court properly dismissed on summary judgment Rachana Suri’s claims brought under the New York state and New York City human rights laws that discrimination was the culprit in her firing from Grey Global Group, an international advertising firm in Manhattan, for lack of evidence.