On October 20, 2026, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York adopted a magistrate judge’s ruling and agreed that an employee’s allegations of nonsexual, gender-based hostile treatment plausibly constituted sexual harassment under the New York State Human Rights Law (NYSHRL) and the New York City Human Rights Law (NYCHRL). It denied the employer’s motion to compel arbitration.
Quick Hits
In Elshabrowy v. Ali Awad Law, P.C., a federal district court recently adopted a magistrate judge’s conclusion that sexual harassment under the NYSHRL and NYCHRL includes unwelcome verbal or physical behavior based on a person’s gender, even if the conduct is not sexual or lewd in nature.
Because the employee plausibly alleged a gender-based hostile work environment, the case qualified as a “sexual harassment dispute” under the EFAA, and the court denied the employer’s motion to compel arbitration of the entire case.
Rather than treating sexual harassment as a narrow subset of… Read the complete article here...
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