Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, DISCRIMINATION—SEX—D.D.C.: Controller’s anti-gay slur to coworker didn’t support employee’s harassment claim, (Sep 10, 2025)

By Marjorie Johnson, J.D.

Finding that the controller’s use of the derogatory term did not create a hostile work environment, the court emphasized that it was not specifically directed at the employee and was delivered via email.

An openly gay hotel manager, who was fired within a month of both complaining about an anti-gay email sent to a colleague and seeking an accommodation and workers’ compensation benefits after a fall that left him disabled, failed to beat a motion to dismiss his District of Columbia Human Rights Act (DCHRA) claims alleging he was subjected to a hostile work environment based on his sexual orientation or his disability and discriminatorily discharged. However, a federal district court allowed his retaliatory discharge claim to advance to discovery (Charon v. Anasazi Group LLC, No. 25-430 (SLS) (D.D.C. Sept. 8, 2025)).

Mistreatment upon hire. The employee was hired as the operations manager at the Graham Georgetown Hotel in October 2023. He claimed that from the start of his employment, he experienced hostility through email correspondence with an HR representative and the financial controller. This hostility allegedly included mishandling 401K deductions, blaming him for errors that were not his fault, delaying reimbursement of expenses, and falsely accusing him of stealing $300 from a safe on the premises.

Anti-gay email to colleague. On March 23, the employee’s openly gay colleague requested a password reset code for his account from the controller, who allegedly responded by sending a reset code that consisting of the derogatory term for homosexual people (“f*g”) followed by the colleague’s employee number. The colleague forwarded the email to the employee, who reported the incident to the hotel owner about one week later. The owner allegedly just laughed and took no further action.

Work-related disability. Shortly thereafter, on April 4, the employee slipped and fell on a wet floor at the hotel. He suffered a serious injury to his right leg, which required multiple surgeries and lengthy rehabilitation. After the accident, management permitted him to primarily work from home as an accommodation.

General counsel’s hostility. Following his fall, he requested documentation to submit a worker’s compensation claim from the HR representative but received no response. Instead, he began to receive “hostile” and “unprofessional” emails from the hotel’s general counsel insinuating he was not being honest about the wet floor causing his fall. In response, the employee requested that she cease emailing him due to anxiety connected to his prior military service. She then sent a lengthy email condemning two coworkers who had assisted him in the worker’s compensation process and warning that “There will be reprisals for everyone involved.” The coworkers later told him that she had “aggressively interrogated” and threatened them with corrective action or termination.

Terminated. On May 9, the employee was terminated and told that his position was being eliminated “due to a restructuring” and the addition of a “new manager of the company.” However, the operations manager at the hotel’s “sister” property was not similarly eliminated. The two coworkers who had assisted him were also allegedly fired around the same time.

Anti-gay email not severe. The employee alleged that that he was subjected to a hostile work environment both because he was gay and because of his disability. Turning first to his claim based on sexual orientation, the court found that while the controller’s “undeniably offensive” email to his colleague was harassing and discriminatory, it was not sufficiently severe or pervasive. Noting that the Supreme Court has stated that the “‘mere utterance of an... epithet which engenders offensive feelings in an employee’ does not sufficiently affect the conditions of employment to implicate Title VII,” the court found this sentiment to be “even more true here where the offensive utterance in question was not specifically directed at [the employee] and was delivered via email rather than in person.”

Unrelated to sexual orientation. To the extent he pointed to more general allegations of mistreatment to support his HWE claim—e.g., that his 401K deductions were mishandled, that he was blamed for errors that were not his fault, or that he was falsely accused of stealing $300—he did not sufficiently allege a causal connection between any of this mistreatment and his sexual orientation.

No disability-based harassment. His disability-based HWE claim also failed since he did not plausibly allege that the general counsel’s emails were hostile and unprofessional because of his disability, nor was the alleged conduct sufficiently extreme. The court also found that the fact he was permitted to work from home after his fall as an accommodation undercut his argument that the other alleged mistreatment he endured from management was motivated by anti-disability bias.

Firing not discriminatory. The general counsel’s alleged conduct also did not support his claim that he was terminated because of his disability. In addition to failing to suggest anti-disability bias, he also did not allege that the attorney had any significant influence on the decision to terminate him. Nor did he describe how the operations manager at the “sister” property who was not terminated was similarly situated to him. Finally, the fact that two nondisabled coworkers were also terminated undercut any inference that he was specifically targeted because of his disability. In sum, his allegations were “simply too threadbare,” particularly since the same decisionmakers who terminated him had presumably been involved in granting his request for a disability accommodation only weeks earlier.

Retaliation claim advances. However, he plausibly alleged that he was terminated in retaliation for complaining about the controller’s anti-gay email and seeking an accommodation and workers’ compensation benefits following his fall. The one-month temporal proximity between his protected activity and termination was itself enough to establish causation at the pleading stage. However, he also alleged that the owner “laughed” at his report regarding the email and took no corrective action; that the hotel’s attorney reacted with hostility to his efforts to document his fall and threatened coercive actions against coworkers who helped him; and that those coworkers were also terminated.

The case is No. 25-430 (SLS).

Judge: Sooknanan, S.

Attorneys: Jason A. Grant (Go Law Group) for Christopher Charon. Anna Rachel Margolis (Jackson Lewis) for Anasazi Group, LLC, and Graham Hotel Georgetown, LLC.

Companies: Anasazi Group, LLC; Graham Hotel Georgetown, LLC

Cases: Discrimination SexDiscrimination DisabilityDiscrimination Discharge Retaliation DistrictofColumbiaNews