She flagged the incident in writing first - two weeks later, she says, they fired her over it
When a worker's complaints keep getting marked "closed," the paper trail can come back to bite the employer.
Aisha Kajtezovic spent three years working at a Life Time fitness club in Syosset, New York. By her account, she was good at it. Her March 31, 2026 performance review, according to the complaint, praised her sales work and called her a key contributor. Two months later, she was fired. Now she is suing.
Kajtezovic, a Muslim woman of Pakistani and South Asian descent who wore a hijab at work, filed a First Amended Complaint on May 29, 2026, in federal court in the Eastern District of New York. She is suing Life Time, Inc. and two managers - Matthew Cohen, her direct supervisor, and Edwin Hetman, the Syosset club's general manager. The filing claims discrimination, a hostile work environment, failure to accommodate her disability, and retaliation under New York State and New York City human rights laws, a federal civil rights statute, and the Family and Medical Leave Act.
Here is the part HR teams should sit with: the complaint describes an internal complaint system that, on paper, kept working - and on the ground, kept failing.
The trouble started on May 17, 2024, the filing says, when a member recorded Kajtezovic without her consent while she enforced the club's entry rules. The video spread online with accusations that she was antisemitic, and the complaint says she and others heard her branded a "Hamas supporter." She says she received threats, asked for security on her closing shifts, and was told by management to "just call the cops" if she felt unsafe.
She reported it. HR opened a case. The complaint says HR told her the matter would be followed up - and that the same day, the case appeared closed, with no one contacting her. The filing describes that pattern repeating over nearly two years: cases opened under reference numbers, then marked "Closed Complete," the concern "transitioned to another database," with no corrective action she could see.
From there, the complaint alleges, the pressure built. Kajtezovic says Cohen pulled her off sales commissions, a real chunk of her pay, telling her commissions were something the company "gave" her and could "take away." She alleges she was the only person in her role to lose them, and that a $2.00 per hour raise offered as a substitute did not cover the gap.
The disability piece is where the case sharpens for accommodation leads. Kajtezovic says she took approved FMLA leave for a leg injury in 2025. Before the leave, the filing says, she had been allowed to use a chair while working. When she returned, she alleges, Cohen revoked that accommodation by demanding extra medical documentation, tried to move her to a windowless back office despite her stated claustrophobia, and - in a text about her chair needs - told her she had "guilty conscience syndrome." She says the message mocked her disability.
The filing also alleges Cohen barred her from eating her home-prepared food in the club cafe after about three years of doing so, told her she could "sit outside" or "eat in her car," and that no comparable rule applied to others.
Then there is the transfer. Kajtezovic says she applied for a part-time role at Life Time's Penn Station club in Manhattan to get away from what she calls a hostile environment. After the Penn Station manager flagged her application to Hetman, the filing says, Hetman directed Cohen to confront her about it. The complaint quotes Cohen telling her, "While you're working here, you cannot go anywhere else," and Hetman telling her to "stop applying everywhere."
The ending should make any HR director check their own termination timeline. On May 15, 2026, Kajtezovic emailed Cohen about a workflow problem and a specific incident where a member walked away. She told him, per the filing, that he could review the camera footage. Two weeks later, on May 29, 2026, Life Time fired her - citing, the complaint says, a member-neglect complaint about walking away from a member, based on camera footage. She alleges the reason was a pretext, built on the same scenario she had flagged in writing first.
For HR, the through-line is documentation and timing. The complaint lays out a sequence in which protected complaints, accommodation requests, and FMLA leave were each followed closely by adverse actions - the close timing that plaintiffs lean on to argue retaliation. It also leans hard on an intake process that logged concerns and closed them without the employee seeing a resolution.
The named managers matter too. Under New York's human rights laws, the complaint pursues Cohen and Hetman personally for aiding and abetting - not just Life Time as the employer.
The allegations have not been tested in court. Life Time and the individual defendants have not yet filed a response, and no court has ruled.
