No Pseudonymity for Israeli Suing Intel Over Layoff Allegedly Prompted by Complaints Over Boss’s Allegedly Pro-Hamas Statements
From Doe v. Intel Corp., decided today by Judge Paul Oetken (S.D.N.Y.):
The Complaint alleges the following facts [which at this point are of course only allegations -EV]. Plaintiff John Doe is a “Jewish Israeli citizen who proudly served with the Israel Defense Forces,” and who has family members currently living in Israel. Plaintiff first moved to the United States to “establish [a] U.S. market presence” for a “Startup” he was working for at the time. Shortly thereafter, Intel acquired the company and Plaintiff “began working for Intel as an Engineering Lead.” In the ensuing years, Plaintiff had a successful career at Intel and was ultimately promoted to “Vice President of Engineering.”
Following the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas, Defendant Badr, “the Vice President of Customer Success at Intel,” allegedly made a number of statements and interacted with a number of social media posts supporting Hamas’s actions and “advocat[ing] for and celebrat[ing] the murder of Israelis like [Plaintiff] and the members of his family.” On January 29, 2024, Badr became Plaintiff’s direct manager. Plaintiff complained, but Intel “did not respond.” Subsequently, Badr took actions to “mak[e] [Plaintiff’s] professional life as intolerable as possible because of his Jewish and Israeli heritage,” including acting “frigid and isolating” toward Plaintiff, asking Plaintiff which of his fellow employees were Israeli and making disparaging comments about them, refusing to approve Plaintiff’s expense requests, interrupting Plaintiff in meetings, and interfering with Plaintiff’s job responsibilities.
Plaintiff again complained and Intel conducted an investigation. Following the investigation, “Intel took no corrective action against Badr,” but, on April 2, 2024, Plaintiff was “laid-off.” When Plaintiff complained, “Intel then created a new job” for him, albeit “with a significant pay cut.” Badr allegedly replaced Plaintiff in his old position with a new employee, “Ahmed,” who “shared the same anti-Israel sentiments as Badr.”
On July 3, 2024, Intel’s Human Resources department informed Plaintiff “that his retention bonus was being cancelled.” Plaintiff claims that this was done as “punish[ment] for protesting discrimination.”
The court concluded that plaintiff, like other plaintiffs, had to sue under his own name:
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 10(a) requires that “all the parties” be named in the title of the complaint. “This requirement, though seemingly pedestrian, serves the vital purpose of facilitating public scrutiny of judicial proceedings and therefore cannot be set aside lightly.” … Plaintiff has “invoked the public forum of litigation in which there is a strong presumption of public access.” “[P]seudonyms are the exception and not the rule, and in order to receive the protections of anonymity, a party must make a case rebutting that presumption.”
And the court concluded that the strong presumption against pseudonymity wasn’t rebutted here:
Plaintiff argues first that the litigation concerns sensitive and personal matters. Courts in this Circuit have found in the past that such matters include “birth control, abortion, homosexuality or the welfare rights of illegitimate children or abandoned families.” But the mere “potential for embarrassment or public humiliation does not, without more, justify a request for anonymity, and only in “extreme” cases is “the sensitivity of the subject matter … so great as in itself to justify pseudonymity without a specific showing of harm.”
Plaintiff appears to recognize, as he must, that mere membership in a protected class based on race, ethnicity, religion, or national origin is not typically considered “highly sensitive.” Nor is such an identity converted into a sensitive matter just because a plaintiff has filed a discrimination or retaliation lawsuit.
Rather, Plaintiff argues that “these are not normal times” and the “current political climate” means that Jewish and Israeli people are more likely to be attack
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