Key Points

  • The Second Circuit affirmed summary judgment for the Town of Eastchester and two former police officials on a fired officer's Section 1983 and New York State Human Rights Law national-origin discrimination claims.
  • The court held that the officer failed to make a prima facie case because he offered no non-speculative evidence that the defendants knew of his Hispanic national origin.
  • The panel agreed with the district court that being from Yonkers is not a race or national origin and treated the supervisor's Yonkers comments as remote stray remarks.
  • In the alternative, the court held the officer showed no evidence that the town's reasons for firing him, based on a hearing officer's misconduct findings, were a pretext for discrimination.
  • Judge John M. Walker Jr. wrote for a panel with Judges Parker and Bianco; no separate opinions were filed.

A federal appeals court on Oct. 27 upheld a ruling against a fired Eastchester, New York, police officer who said his supervisor's insults about his hometown of Yonkers showed bias against his Hispanic heritage, holding that he offered insufficient evidence that his bosses knew he was Hispanic.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed summary judgment for the Town of Eastchester, former Police Chief Timothy Bonci and former Lt. Jeffrey Hunter. Circuit Judge John M. Walker Jr. wrote the opinion for a panel that also included Circuit Judges Parker and Bianco. No judge wrote separately.

The decision rests on a threshold rule of discrimination law: an employer cannot be liable for bias based on a trait it did not know about. The panel held that the former officer, Anthony Barberan, had only speculation to offer on that point, and it agreed with the trial court that "being from Yonkers is not a race or national origin for purposes of a discrimination claim."

Barberan, who was born and raised in Yonkers, identifies racially as Caucasian with a Hispanic national origin because his father was born in Ecuador. He served in the Eastchester Police Department from July 2012 until the town fired him in November 2021.

He alleged that Hunter, then a lieutenant, made a series of remarks about Yonkers in 2014 and 2015. After a 2014 investigation into Barberan's failure to search an arrestee, Hunter allegedly told him that being raised in Yonkers "wasn't the best approach." In 2015, after criticizing Barberan for using slang during a traffic stop, Hunter allegedly said that Barberan's "Yonkers ghetto doesn't add up to my Eastchester professional" and showed him a video of a Black hip-hop artist to illustrate how Barberan presented himself. Hunter denied the remarks, but the court took Barberan at his word, as the summary judgment standard requires.

Barberan sued in November 2019. His first two complaints identified him as a member of a protected class because he was Caucasian and alleged that he was discriminated against for failing to conform to racial stereotypes. Only in his second amended complaint, filed in October 2022, did he claim discrimination because he is Hispanic.

Magistrate Judge Victoria Reznick of the Southern District of New York, presiding with the parties' consent, granted summary judgment to the town in March 2025. On appeal, Barberan challenged only the ruling on his Section 1983 and state-law discrimination claims, and only as to his firing.

The panel analyzed those claims under the McDonnell Douglas framework, a three-step test in which the employee must first make a prima facie case, a basic showing that raises an inference of discrimination. The court quoted its own precedent: "[A] defendant's discriminatory intent cannot be inferred, even at the prima facie stage, from circumstances unknown to the defendant."

Bonci and Hunter both disclaimed knowing that Barberan was Hispanic. Barberan pointed to a 2011 fingerprint form on which, the court said, he had inconsistently identified himself as both Hispanic and non-Hispanic, and to his statement that he announced his Ecuadorian heritage at a 2016 union meeting. The court found no proof that any defendant attended that meeting and noted that it took place after Hunter's remarks.

Walker wrote that inferring knowledge "requires pure speculation that, because Barberan grew up in Yonkers, he must be Hispanic." He added: "The record is devoid of any evidence that the national origin of Yonkers residents is Hispanic."

Even if the defendants had believed Barberan was Hispanic, the court held, no rational factfinder would link comments about Yonkers' culture to Hispanic national origin without more evidence. The panel added that the remarks, made years before the adverse actions at issue, would at most amount to "stray remarks" that were "remote and oblique" from those actions in 2018, 2019 and 2021.

The court also pointed to Barberan's own filings. He did not claim Hispanic national-origin discrimination in his 2018 or 2021 charges with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or in his first two complaints. "If Barberan thought he was being discriminated against based on his Hispanic national origin, surely he would have said so at the outset," Walker wrote. Asked about his inconsistent self-identification, Barberan answered that he "d[idn't] know" if he had done that.

The court held in the alternative that the claim would fail at the later McDonnell Douglas steps, which ask whether the employer had a legitimate reason and whether that reason was a pretext for discrimination. The opinion recounts a disciplinary record that included three investigations for failing to properly search arrestees, including a 2019 incident in which an arrestee used a bandana Barberan had failed to remove to attempt suicide.

Barberan was fired after a multi-day hearing in June 2021. The hearing officer found that he had violated all three charges against him, insubordination, unlawful detention and search, and incompetence, and that he had repeatedly lied in a police report, to a superior officer and in his testimony. The town's board adopted the hearing officer's recommendation to terminate him.

"Indeed, most glaringly, Barberan does not even allege that any of the relevant decisionmakers in 2021—then-Lieutenant Rodriguez, the hearing officer, or the Town's Board—were aware of any of the Yonkers comments or his Hispanic national origin," Walker wrote. The panel said it was "wholly unpersuaded" by Barberan's argument that he was punished more harshly than other officers, finding that he had not shown those officers were similarly situated.

Michael H. Sussman of Sussman & Associates represented Barberan. Brian S. Sokoloff of Sokoloff Stern LLP represented the town and the two former officials.

The decision leaves the district court's judgment in place. Barberan had already waived any appeal of the rulings against his Title VII claims and his retaliation claims, and the panel rejected his remaining arguments as meritless.