June 15, 2020

Standards applied by courts in determining if hostile work environment claim has merit

Plaintiff [Petitioner] appealed the decision of the United States Federal District Court's granting summary judgment to Defendants [Respondents] in the action brought by Petitioner in which he had alleged that he had suffered having to work in a hostile work environment in violation of 42 U.S.C. §1983 and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. 

The Circuit Court of Appeals, noting that summary judgment is appropriate “if there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law,” explained that to establish a hostile work environment claim under 42 U.S.C. §1983, a plaintiff must show that “the workplace is permeated with discriminatory intimidation, ridicule, and insult that is sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of the victim's employment and create an abusive working environment” such that a reasonable person would find it hostile or abusive. 

In addition, said the court, the victim "must subjectively perceive the work environment to be abusive" and the incidents complained of "must be more than episodic; they must be sufficiently continuous and concerted in order to be deemed pervasive.” 

Addressing Petitioner's complaint, the Court of Appeals opined that "the evidence brought forth at summary judgment is insufficiently severe to satisfy the objective component of the hostile work environment analysis" because:

1. The conduct here was not so continuous as to create an objectively hostile work environment and while distasteful, the incident was not repeated nor were similar vulgar comments made. 

2. Three other incidents recited by Petitioner were not sufficiently “continuous and concerted” as to satisfy the objective component of a hostile work environment claim. 

3. Although a single episode may be sufficient to give rise to a hostile work environment claim, the one incident so relied on by Petitioner "falls short of the severity required to make out such a claim."

4. Conceding that the workplace environment here was characterized by "a degree of offensive language," the court observed that Petitioner "himself had participated and which sometimes included physical contact."* 

Considering these factors, the Circuit Court concluded that the conduct and comments complained of by Petitioner "were not so humiliating as to take them outside the run-of-the-mill, if unpleasant, vulgarity present in this workplace" and the conduct Petitioner described is more properly characterized as “mere offensive utterance[s]” rather than the “physically threatening or humiliating” conduct condemned by Title VII and the 14th Amendment. 

Accordingly, the Circuit Court held that under the circumstances "the district court was correct in granting summary judgment in [Respondent's] favor." 

* The decision states that Petitioner's deposition testimony noted that he had “talked about sex” with other officers and that other officers had said “outrageous things” to be funny.

The decision is posted on the Internet at: