ALBANY – A federal judge has pared down a civil rights complaint filed by a lieutenant in an upstate county sheriff's department who alleged that he faced long-standing discrimination and a hostile work environment because of his Lebanese ancestry.

Northern District Judge Mae D'Agostino kept alive James Karam's claims for discrimination and an equal protection violation for the denial of sick time donations from his co-workers at the Rensselaer County Sheriff's Department, as well as one claim for the violation of his First Amendment rights.

But she dismissed several other claims related to on-the-job harassment, often because they occurred too long ago to be actionable or did not indicate a pervasive-enough pattern of behavior to constitute a continuing violation of discrimination.