Skip to main content

Two Butt Grabs By an Employer is Apparently Not Offensive Conduct to a Reasonable Person


Stallworth v. Guyoung Tech USA, Inc. - US District Court for the Southern District of Alabama, Southern Division


Facts: Tanisha Stallworth was hired to work at Guyoung Tech USA, Inc.  On June 28, 2012 while at work, Jin Rae Cho (a Vice President of Guyoung and supervisor) approached Stallworth to talk about work and placed a hand on her butt.  Stallworth backed away and asked a fellow employee to talk to Cho.  Cho then asked Stallworth to come back over and after talking with her, patted Stallworth's butt again, smiled, and gave her a thumbs up.

Stallworth reported the incident and was told that it was not the first time Cho had done that and would not be the last.  Stallworth then sought out HR to complain and file a sexual harassment complaint.  After a period of time, Stallworth was informed that her services were no longer needed.  Stallworth subsequently filed a discrimination claim against Guyoung for Cho's actions.  Guyoung moved for summary judgment on Stallworth's claims.

Holding:  The District Court granted Guyoung's motion for summary judgment and held that Cho's behavior was not severe nor pervasive, and therefore Stallworth could not prevail on her discrimination claim.  In order for a party to prevail on a sexual harassment claim, it must be shown that:

  • She was subjected to harassment because she was a woman;
  • The harassment was severe or pervasive;  
  • She was offended;
  • A reasonable woman in her shoes would have been offended; and
  • There is a basis for holding the employer liable.

The court acknowledged that while Cho's actions may have been humiliating to Stallworth, Cho's conduct was not frequent, severe, physically threatening, or of a nature that would unreasonably interfere with Stallworth's work performance.  As well, the court suggested that Stallworth had thin skin as a reasonable person would not find these butt grabs to be severe or pervasive conduct.

Judgment:  The District Court granted Guyoung's motion for summary judgment and held that Stallworth could not prevail on her discrimination claim because a reasonable person would not find two butt grabs to be offensive conduct, nor was this conduct frequent, severe, or physically threatening.

The Takeaway:  This is a rather interesting opinion.  I find it hard to believe that one butt grab is not considered offensive...let alone two.  This case is somewhat of an outlier, and for those practicing outside of Alabama, it should serve as little more than an interesting read of a somewhat extreme latitude that is given to employers who grope employees in the state, at least in this court.  

Majority Opinion Judge:  Judge DuBose

Date:  May 30, 2014

Opinion:  http://www.scribd.com/doc/228379868/STALLWORTH-v-GUYOUNG-TECH-USA-INC

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

NLRB: Discussion Among Employees About Tip Pooling is Protected Concerted Activity

  This Advice Memorandum from the National Labor Relations Board’s Associate General Counsel, Jayme Sophir, addressed whether employees which discussed and complained about tip pooling at work constituted protected concerted activity. In relevant part, an employer in New York operated a chain of steakhouses.  While tip pooling was in place at these steakhouses, some of the employees objected to it on the grounds that it was not transparent and improperly divided tips among the workers.  Employees were told not to complain or talk to each other about the tip pool and were told that doing so would endanger their jobs.  Despite the employer later attempting to provide some clarity as to how the tips were being divided, rancor still existed among some employees.  At one point, the employees were told by a general manager that some employees that had been talking about the tip pool were “cleared out” and the employer would continue to do so. In the Advice Memorandum, it was noted that emplo
Post a Comment
Read more

What I’ve Been Reading This Week

A few years ago, I remember when the “Fight for $15” movement was taking off around the country.  Lo and behold, it appears that a $15/hour minimum wage is not the stopping point, which should be no surprise.  As the below article notes, New York is aggressively moving to ramp up hourly wage rates even higher.  While all the  below articles are worth a read, I called particular attention to that one. As always, below are a couple article that caught my eye this week. Disney World Workers Reject Latest Contract Offer Late last week, it was announced that workers at Disney World had rejected the most recent contract offer from the company, calling on their employer to do better.  As Brooks Barnes at The New York Times writes, the unions that represent about 32,000 workers at Disney World reported their members resoundingly rejected the 5 year contract offer which would have seen workers receive a 10% raise and retroactive increased back pay.  While Disney’s offer would have increased pa
Post a Comment
Read more

Utah Non-Compete Bill Falters in House

Last month, a non-compete bill sponsored by Representative Brian Greene (Republican from Pleasant Grove) & up for vote in the Utah House failed to make it through the Legislature.  The bill sought to ban enforcement of non-competes if they came after a worker was already employed, given no compensation (such as a bonus or promotion) for signing the non-compete, and laid off within six months.  However, by a 22 - 49 vote, the bill was resoundingly defeated after some business groups lobbied to kill the non-compete bill.  One group in particular, The Free Enterprise Utah coalition, argued that the Utah State Legislature should hold off on any changes to non compete laws in the state until a survey about non competes was done among Utah businesses.  Representative Greene had countered this claim and argued that a survey was not needed to show that the current non compete laws in the states allowed many businesses, including some small high tech companies in the state, to per
Post a Comment
Read more