On May 22, 2025, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit declined to reinstate a case alleging that the New York court system discriminates against court interpreters by paying them less because they are foreign-born. The state court system was first sued in May 2022, alleging that despite having specialized skills, court interpreters make about half of what their counterparts, such as court reporters, clerks, and officers, get paid.
At the district court level, the court dismissed Plaintiffs’ claims for national origin discrimination. Plaintiffs presented “statistical evidence” showing that court interpreters receive less pay than court reporters who are “majority white, English speaking employees,” as well as “anecdotal allegations of hostility” faced by court reporters. The Court of Appeals held that this is not enough to state an Equal Protection claim under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
First, to plead an Equal Protection claim based on statistical evidence, the numbers “must not only be statistically significant in the mathematical sense, but they must also be of a level that makes other plausible non-discriminatory explanations very unlikely.” By alleging that the “majority” of court interpreters are of a “non-Anglo national origin,” while court reporters are mainly people who are not foreign-born, the court held that this is too vague and conclusory to state an Equal Protection claim, absent providing any statistics in either percentages or numbers.
Second, the anecdotal allegations regarding hostility towards court interpreters are insufficient to state a claim, as the anecdotes fail to demonstrate that there was a discriminatory policy or custom related to how the court system pays court interpreters. Because the Plaintiffs sued the state court system, a judge, and the human resources director in their official capacities, Plaintiffs must show that a state policy played a role in the alleged discriminatory conduct.
The Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment of the district court, finding that the Plaintiffs’ claims were properly dismissed. Counsel for the court interpreters says they will ask the court to reconsider its decision.