M&T Bank allegedly denied a promotion to – and terminated in retaliation – a former executive because she was both gay and a woman, according to a lawsuit filed Monday in New York.
A former vice president and commercial branch manager based in Long Island, New York, alleges she was “treated as a secondclass citizen” by her boss, who “repeatedly refused to schedule standard 1-on-1 meetings” with her and was “perennially unresponsive to her” despite being readily available to straight male subordinates.
The animus toward her grew following her application for promotion, she alleged, because he “opposed the notion of a gay woman being elevated to a regional-level position on par” with his own.
The boss also violated the plaintiff’s rights in relation to protected medical leave, according to the lawsuit, by contacting her to address alleged branch operational issues “while she was incapacitated and recovering from” knee surgery.
“This contact was a transparent pretext to harass [the plaintiff], as [the boss] knew or should have known that his demands were entirely unfulfillable,” the lawsuit said. “Verifying the alleged timesheet discrepancies required [the plaintiff] to be physically on-site to personally observe employees entering and leaving the building, an obvious impossibility while she was out on medical leave.”
Following the plaintiff’s return from medical leave, the boss allegedly “lashed out, aggressively revisiting” the issue, and “explicitly threatened her, stating, ‘HR is watching you.’” Following that interaction, the plaintiff filed a complaint against her boss.
A senior human resources official at the Buffalo, New York-based regional bank openly mocked the plaintiff’s claims against her boss as “buzz words,” according to the lawsuit. The bank terminated her in retaliation the following month, the lawsuit alleged.
A spokesperson for M&T declined to comment on active litigation. The plaintiff’s attorneys did not immediately respond to a request for comment.