Knight v. State University of New York at Stony Brook, 880 F.3d 636

Anthony Knight, an African-American union electrician referred to Stony Brook by IBEW Local 25, worked on a Stony Brook construction project for ~6 months in 2011.
Knight discovered and reported racist graffiti in a worksite bathroom to the foreman and shop steward; his work ended shortly thereafter and he sued for Title VII discrimination and retaliation.
The district court dismissed the discrimination claim but allowed the retaliation claim to proceed to trial; Stony Brook argued Knight was not its employee and thus not covered by Title VII.
The jury was instructed to apply the Reid factors (the common-law agency test) to determine employee status; the jury found Knight was not an employee and returned a verdict for Stony Brook.
Knight moved for JMOL at trial but did not renew a post-verdict Rule 50(b) motion; he appealed, raising errors about submitting/charging the employee-issue to the jury, sufficiency of the evidence, and various evidentiary/instructional rulings.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether a judge must decide employee status (not a jury)	Knight: employee-status is a question of law for the court, so the jury should not have been asked to decide it	Stony Brook: jury may decide employee-status under proper instructions	Court: submission to jury not reversible error; Kirsch controls — courts may submit employee issue to jury
Whether Reid factors were proper jury instruction	Knight: Reid factors only distinguish employees from independent contractors and thus were inapplicable	Stony Brook: Reid is the proper Title VII employee-status test	Court: Reid factors govern Title VII employee analysis generally; instruction proper
Sufficiency of evidence that Knight was an employee	Knight: evidence compelled finding he was an employee; district court should have granted JMOL	Stony Brook: factual disputes existed; plus Knight failed to renew Rule 50(b) post-verdict	Court: challenge barred for failure to renew Rule 50(b); in any event evidence raised factual disputes for jury
Other evidentiary and instruction challenges	Knight: various district-court rulings and instructions were erroneous	Stony Brook: those issues were conditional on employee-finding and jury found Knight not an employee	Court: because jury found Knight not an employee, these issues need not be reached and do not warrant reversal

Cmty. for Creative Non-Violence v. Reid, 490 U.S. 730 (1989) (adopts multi-factor common-law agency test for employee status)
Kirsch v. Fleet Street, Ltd., 148 F.3d 149 (2d Cir. 1998) (submission of employee-status question to jury not reversible error)
Unitherm Food Sys., Inc. v. Swift-Eckrich, Inc., 546 U.S. 394 (2006) (failure to renew Rule 50(b) forecloses appellate sufficiency challenge)
Waggoner v. Barclays PLC, 875 F.3d 79 (2d Cir. 2017) (standards for reviewing legal questions at trial)
Nationwide Mut. Ins. Co. v. Darden, 503 U.S. 318 (1992) (applies Reid factors in related statutory context)