I really hate bullies. My strong feelings on the topic have inspired me to dedicate my career and law practice to vindicating the rights of the oppressed, the marginalized, and the powerless – often persons of color – in the workplace and elsewhere. Every so often, I’m forced to advocate for an unlikely “client”: myself.
Last year I wrote a blog post about a Southern District of New York decision and order in a case captioned Varughese v. Mount Sinai Med. Ctr., No. 12-cv-8812 CM JCF, 2015 WL 1499618 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 27, 2015), which granted defendants’ motion for summary judgment and dismissed with prejudice all of plaintiff Dr. Leena Varughese’s claims of employment discrimination and hostile work environment.
In her thorough and detailed decision, Judge McMahon wrote (inter alia):
On the evidence in the record, no reasonable juror could find Varughese to have overcome the overwhelming evidence that Defendants disciplined and terminated her, not because of her sex or her ethnicity, but because of her own admitted behavior-behavior that her employer found unprofessional and inappropriate. …
Throughout the final year of her residency, Varughese engaged in unacceptable workplace behavior. By her own admission, she yelled, she swore, she interrupted, she rolled her eyes, she was late, absent, and-in conversations she recorded and submitted to the Court-by turns confrontational and evasive. The very tape recordings she made-and the pacing and aggressive tone of voice they reveal-confirm the testimony of others about her attitude and her behavior.
Varughese, 2015 WL 1499618, at *56.
Yesterday, I received the following message through my website’s contact from one Leena Varughese: “Please remove my case from your website that is promoting a false narrative about me. The summary judgment is false and entirely devoid of any facts. Cease and desist or I will take actions against you.” (Rather than being “entirely devoid of any facts”, the decision is indeed full of facts.)
“Great,” I thought. “Here we go again.”
Later that day, she called me. On the phone she reiterated her demand. After I refused, she cursed at me, threatened to “ruin me” and to sue me (she did not say for what), and accused me of accepting money to write about her case.
Over the next couple of days, she wrote several derogatory things about me on her Twitter account, ranging from generic insults to full-blown, tinfoil-hat rantings (e.g., that I acted “to bolster white supremacy”, “target[ed] [her] to get ahead”, and am “bloging to exploit [her] and [her] suffering & promote various false allegations of Judge McMahon”).
All untrue.
Initially, Dr. Varughese’s position is somewhat surprising, given that she has, for example: written about her case on Twitter; started a “Go Fund Me” page to raise money for it; asked the court to “ensure that … the public can access [her] own filings”; and discussed her case on her LinkedIn page, where she provides the PACER website URL and her case’s index number, in what appears to be an invitation to online visitors to her page to access the case’s filings – which of course include Judge McMahon’s summary judgment ruling. In other words, she wants to be able to loudly and publicly discuss her case on her terms and for the public to be able to access her own filings, while reserving the right to prohibit people from writing about other aspects of the case.
Such odious hypocrisy will not go unchallenged. Not on my watch.
Look: As a plaintiffs’ lawyer, I sympathize with victims of discrimination, and am pleased to see and write about cases where a discrimination plaintiff wins. But plaintiffs don’t always win. All court decisions – whether precedential or not and whether subsequently overturned, reversed, or vacated – become part of the fabric of our jurisprudence. They are, moreover, instructive as to (e.g.) how a particular judge analyzes legal issues and what authorities they find persuasive. Also, limiting my blog to “winning plaintiff” cases might misleadingly imply that discrimination cases are easier to prosecute than they are.
This should go without saying, but I will say it anyway: My decision to write about Judge McMahon’s decision dismissing Dr. Varughese’s case was not, in any way, motivated by Dr. Varughese’s race, racial bias, or any desire to harm Dr. Varughese or her reputation.
Driven more by misdirected anger than facts, Dr. Varughese apparently missed, e.g., this post and this post on my website about cases where the court held in favor of minority race discrimination plaintiffs. Interestingly, the former was written by Judge McMahon – the same Judge McMahon whom Dr. Varughese accused of judicial bias.
I do not know Dr. Varguhese, and therefore cannot say what prompted her to say and write the things she did. Perhaps she thought I would cower in fear at her lawsuit threat (and not laugh as I did). Maybe she assumed I would not actually respond to her threats.
While her displeasure with the court’s decision to dismiss her case is understandable (if misguided), that is no excuse for her conduct – including her attempts to censor protected expression with baseless lawsuit threats and her dangerous, cavalier, and irresponsible use of racial invective.