Makuch v. Centreville Bank

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF RHODE ISLAND
JULIET MAKUCH,
Plaintiff,
v.
CENTREVILLE BANK,
Defendant.
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C.A. No. 25-cv-438-JJM-AEM
ORDER
Plaintiff Juliet Makuch brings claims for sex discrimination, retaliation, and
hostile work environment against Defendant Centreville Bank under Title VII of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII), the Rhode Island Civil Rights Act (RICRA), and
the Rhode Island Fair Employment Practices Act (FEPA). 	Centreville moves to
dismiss Counts VII, VIII, and IX for hostile work environment. ECF No. 6.
I. 	BACKGROUND
On November 28, 2022, Ms. Makuch was hired at Centreville Bank as Social
Media & Digital Marketing Manager. 	ECF No. 1 ¶ 12. 	About ten months later,
Ms. Makuch’s original reporting manager was fired, and she began reporting to Josh
Varone, Senior Vice President of Human Resources, for two months.
	Id. ¶¶ 15, 16.
Thereafter, she began reporting to Vanessa Marszalek.
	Id. ¶ 18. 	Ms. Makuch
received positive performance reviews from her original reporting manager and
Mr. Varone did not raise any issues or concerns regarding her performance while
under 	his 	management.
	Id. 	¶¶ 	13, 	17. 	Ms. 	Marszalek 	also 	gave 	her 	an
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“overwhelmingly 	positive” 	performance 	review 	at 	her 	year-end 	review 	and
subsequently raised her salary.
Id.
Personally, Ms. Makuch was engaged to be married and talked to her
coworkers about her intent to become pregnant and start a family.
Id. ¶¶ 21, 23. On
or about March 20, 2024, she found out she was pregnant.
Id. ¶ 24. Concerned about
her health and the health of her very early pregnancy at the time, Ms. Makuch
reported concerns to Facilities and Operations that Ms. Marszalek was coming into
the office while sick.
	Id. ¶¶ 25, 26. 	Two weeks later, two other colleagues in
supervisory roles, whom Ms. Makuch had not disclosed her pregnancy to, inquired
about her being pregnant.
Id. ¶¶ 27, 28.
Four days later, on April 15, Ms. Marszalek informed Ms. Makuch that she
was being demoted with a reduction in pay because she did not view her as a
manager, with no further assessment.
	Id. ¶ 29. 	Ms. Makuch almost immediately
began communicating with her former manager, Mr. Varone, and another Human
Resources employee requesting reconsideration of her demotion.
Id. ¶ 30;
See Ex. 2.
In this email, she disclosed her pregnancy and expressed to them that she was
concerned that a demotion would negatively impact her growing family.
Id.
Ms. Makuch, Mr. Varone, and Ms. Marszalek met a week later, and they told
her the reason for the demotion was because of a “reorganization” unrelated to her
performance.
	Id. ¶ 32. 	That same day she received an email with the terms of her
demotion and reduced salary.
Id. ¶ 34. Ms. Makuch was provided with the condition
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that she either accepts the demotion or leave Centreville with a severance package.
Id. ¶ 35.
Ms. 	Makuch 	declined 	the 	demotion, 	expressed 	her 	confusion 	about 	the
unknown reorganization, and her concern that the reason given was questionable
considering Centreville management’s recent knowledge of her pregnancy.
	Id. ¶ 38.
On April 29, she met with Human Resources and again informed them she was
declining the demotion.
	Id. ¶¶ 39, 40. 	She followed up days later with an email
summarizing the alleged discriminatory events, stating that she was discriminated
against based on her pregnancy, Centreville blatantly dismissed her requests for
further explanation, and that “the stress, pain and suffering of the past few weeks
has not been good for [her] or [her] baby.”
Id. ¶ 43. On May 3, she resigned from her
employment.
Id. ¶ 47.
II. 	STANDARD OF REVIEW
To survive a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6), a complaint must contain
sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to “state a claim for relief that is plausible
on its face.”
	Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (citing
Bell Atl. Corp. v.
Twombly, 550 U.S. 554, 570 (2007)). A claim is plausible when the pleaded facts allow
the court to draw a “reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the
misconduct alleged” and must be “more than a sheer possibility that a defendant has
acted unlawfully.”
	Id. at 663, 678. 	In assessing plausibility, the court must accept
all well-pleaded factual allegations as true, but it need not credit legal conclusions or
“threadbare recitals of the elements of a cause of action.”
Id. at 678. The plausibility
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inquiry is context specific and requires the reviewing court to draw on its judicial
experience and common sense.
Id. at 679.
III. 	DISCUSSION
Centreville moves for partial dismissal of Ms. Makuch’s complaint, focusing on
the three counts alleging hostile work environment. 	The Court will therefore limit
its discussion to those legal claims and Ms. Makuch’s allegations thereon.
A. 	Hostile Work Environment Standard1
Centreville bases its motion to dismiss on the fact that Ms. Makuch’s complaint
fails to plausibly allege any harassment based on sex and the requisite severity or
pervasiveness to state a claim for hostile work environment. For a plaintiff to succeed
in a hostile work environment claim she must plausibly allege that: (1) she is a
member of a protected class; (2) she was subjected to unwelcome harassment; (3) the
harassment was based on her protected status; (4) the harassment was sufficiently
severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of her employment and create an abusive
work environment; (5) the conduct was both objectively and subjectively offensive;
and (6) there is a basis for employer liability.
See O’Rourke v. City of Providence, 235
F.3d 713, 728 (1st Cir. 2001) (citing
Faragher v. City of Boca Raton, 524 U.S. 775,
787-89 (1998);
Harris v. Forklift Sys., Inc., 510 U.S. 17, 20-23 (1993)). Centreville in
1 Courts analyze hostile work environment claims brought under Title VII, the
RICRA, and RIFEPA under the same substantive standards.
	See, e.g.,
Rathbun v.
Autozone, Inc., 361 F.3d 62, 71 (1st Cir. 2004) (analyzing RICRA and FEPA claims
under the same framework as Title VII);
see also DeCamp v. Dollar Tree Stores, Inc.,
875 A.2d 13, 21 (applying the same standard in a disparate treatment employment
discrimination case under Title VII, RICRA, and FEPA).
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its briefing does not dispute for the purposes of its motion to dismiss that she was a
member of a protected class, that the conduct was both objectively and subjectively
offensive, and that there is a basis for employer liability, so the Court will focus its
analysis on whether she was subjected to unwelcome harassment based on her
protected status and whether that harassment was severe or pervasive.
1. 	Unwelcome Harassment Based on Sex/Pregnancy
Centreville argues that Ms. Makuch fails to allege harassment but frames her
demotion as a “discrete personnel decision framed as a reorganization.” Ms. Makuch
argues that Centreville mischaracterizes her allegations as a single discrete action of
a demotion when she experienced a series of harassing incidents.
Ms. Makuch alleges that over the span of about forty days, beginning on
March 24, 2024, when she disclosed her pregnancy to Facilities and Operations, until
her resignation on May 3, she experienced a pattern of conduct that constitutes
unwelcome sex-based harassment. 	When she disclosed her pregnancy based on her
workplace safety concerns, she received unwelcome pregnancy-related comments and
speculation from supervisors, notice of her demotion with no explanation, conflicting
reasons for her demotion, Human Resources personnel repeatedly dismissed her
complaints of pregnancy discrimination, and finally an ultimatum to accept the
demotion or lose her job. Ms. Makuch argues that in totality, these allegations make
up a series of pregnancy-related harassing acts that eventually resulted in the
termination of her employment. The Court agrees that a change in treatment of an
employee tied to a protected status may satisfy the element of harassment based on
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sex.
See Danna v. R.I. Sch. of Design, C.A. No. 21-188-JJM-PAS, 2022 WL 1538881,
at *3 (D.R.I. May 16, 2022) (holding that the employer’s actions of attempting to
dissuade her from taking the position, changing her job description, and bullying her
thereafter upon learning she had a child and husband meets the second element of
hostile work environment). 	Centreville argues that Ms. Makuch’s demotion was an
isolated incident, which is “not sufficient to create actionable harassment,”
see
O’Rourke, 235 F.3d at 729, but the Court finds that, when it accepts Ms. Makuch’s
factual allegations as true, she has sufficiently alleged a pattern of conduct that is
tantamount to harassment.
2. 	Severity or Pervasiveness
Centreville next argues that even if the Court were to find that the demotion
was harassment, that conduct was not “severe or pervasive” because it was limited to
two pregnancy-related comments and an adverse employment action. 	Centreville
argues that Ms. Makuch’s allegations resemble the type of discrete employment
decisions that courts have declined to treat as actionable and thus do not plausibly
rise to the level of severity or pervasiveness necessary to sustain a claim for hostile
work environment. 	Ms. Makuch alleges that the intense focus for forty days on her
pregnancy and its alleged effect on her future with the bank are sufficient to meet
the severe and/or pervasive element on a motion to dismiss.
There is no “mathematically precise test” that courts employ to analyze the
question of severe or pervasive, however, the factfinder may consider a broad range
of conduct that can contribute to meeting this element under a hostile work
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environment claim.
	Gerald v. Univ. of Puerto Rico, 707 F.3d 7, 18 (1st Cir. 2013);
O’Rourke, 235 F.3d at 729;
see also Conto v. Concord Hosp., Inc., 265 F.3d 79, 81 (1st
Cir. 2001) (stating that a hostile work environment claim “necessarily entail[s] a fact
specific assessment of all the attendant circumstances”). Rather than focusing on the
acts Centreville argues are discreet, the Court must assess the totality of the
circumstances, considering “the frequency of the discriminatory conduct; its severity;
whether it is physically threatening or humiliating, or a mere offensive utterance;
and whether it unreasonably interferes with an employee’s work performance.”
O’Rourke, 235 F.3d at 729 (quoting
Harris, 510 U.S. at 23). “[A] worker need not be
propositioned, touched offensively, or harassed by sexual innuendo in order to have
been sexually harassed,”
Montalvo-Figueroa v. DNA Auto Corp., 414 F. Supp. 3d 213,
244 (D.P.R. 2019) (quoting
Billings v. Town of Grafton, 515 F.3d 39, 48 (1st Cir.
2008)), and conduct need not be both severe and pervasive—it is sufficient to
plausibly 	allege 	only 	one 	of 	those 	factors.
	Nieves-Borges 	v. 	El 	Conquistador
Partnership, L.P., S.E., 936 F.3d 1, 10 (1st Cir. 2019) (stating the two are “alternate
criteria” for evaluating a hostile work environment claim).
Here, Ms. Makuch plausibly alleges a series of incidents that name specific
actors and dates on which the harassing conduct occurred. The dramatic reversal in
treatment almost immediately following her pregnancy announcement detrimentally
altered the conditions of Ms. Makuch’s employment. 	The unwelcome pregnancy
comments, inquiries into her pregnancy, and contradicting explanations about her
demotion equate to repeated inappropriate conduct that ultimately led to the severe
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consequences of the demotion, pay cut, and her constructive discharge from her
employment. 	Therefore, 	the 	Court 	finds 	that 	based 	on 	the 	totality 	of 	the
circumstances, the rate of escalation paired with the nature of the harassing conduct
that ultimately led to a demotion, when accepted as true, plausibly supports a
reasonable inference that Centreville’s conduct was severe or pervasive.
IV. 	CONCLUSION
For these reasons, the Court finds that Ms. Makuch has plausibly alleged facts
sufficient to state a claim for a hostile work environment and thus DENIES
Centreville’s 12(b)(6) Motion to Dismiss. ECF No. 6.
IT IS SO ORDERED.
s/John J. McConnell, Jr.
_________________________________
JOHN J. MCCONNELL, JR.
Chief Judge
United States District Court
April 1, 2026
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