Judge upholds verdict in NYPD sexual-orientation case

Volume 1, Number 51 | The Weekly Newspaper of Chelsea | September 7 - 13, 2007

By Arthur S. Leonard

In a sexual-orientation case that LGBT advocates had been watching closely, a New York trial judge recently ruled that a combined verdict of close to $1.5 million against the New York City Police Department will stand.

New York County Supreme Court Justice Martin Shulman agreed with a November 2006 jury verdict that Inspector James Hall, one of the highest-ranking officers in the NYPD, had denied Sergeant Robert Sorrenti an assignment to the Office of Community Affairs’ Youth Services Section (YSS) because he believed he was gay and therefore presented a danger to the young clients of the unit. (The YSS oversees the Police Athletic League, the anti-drug effort DARE and other programs for kids.)

The jury had also concluded that two other officers who stuck up for Sorrenti suffered retaliation by Hall, who pushed their promising careers into dead-end assignments, leading them to take early retirement as soon as they qualified for full pensions.

“The jury concluded that, although Sorrenti was qualified for the YSS Sergeant position, Hall discriminated against him because of his perceived sexual orientation and deprived him of a career opportunity to work with youth because of Hall’s stereotyped views of gay men,” wrote Shulman in his opinion. “The jury further concluded that Sorrenti was then subjected to retaliatory conduct by CITY/NYPD employees reasonably likely to deter a person from engaging in protected activity after he filed an [Office of Equal Employment Opportunity] complaint of discrimination against Hall and commenced this civil action.”

In a magazine story published shortly after the lawsuit was filed in 2003, Sorrenti’s attorney, Colleen Meenan, was quoted saying that her client “resents the implication that he’s a gay man. He does not identify as a gay man.”

Shulman’s opinion says nothing one way or the other about Sorrenti’s sexual orientation, treating it as a case of discrimination based on perceived sexual orientation, which is handled in city law precisely the same as bias based on actual sexual orientation.

After opposing Hall’s action, two colleagues of Sorrenti, Captain Lori Albunio and Lieutenant Tom Connors, were moved to dead-end jobs with less prestige and responsibility, and ended up serving out their time until 20 years in order to retain their full pensions.

The city argued that the fact that neither officer quit right away undermined their claims of “constructive discharge” (meaning that they were in effect fired), but Shulman rejected this argument, noting the economic circumstances that would impel a veteran officer a few years away from full pension entitlement to stick out an adverse situation.

Shulman also rejected the city’s claim that the damages, divided roughly equally between Sorrenti and the two other officers, were excessive, and ruled against its argument that a new provision of the city’s Human Rights Law calling for liberal interpretation of the retaliation provisions should not be applied retroactively to this case.

A few years ago, the City Council amended the Human Rights Law to make clear that it intended a broader interpretation, under which any action that would deter somebody from complaining about discrimination could be considered illegal retaliation.

The city announced that it was appealing the case when the jury verdict was announced last November. That appeal is the next step in the process, now that the trial judge has confirmed the jury’s damage award.