Skip to main content

Even A Few Isolated Comments Can Create a Hostile Work Environment Claim


Boyer-Liberto v. Fontainebleau Corp - Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals


Facts:  Reya Boyer-Liberto ("Liberto") was an African American employee at the Clarion Resort Fontainebleau Hotel in Ocean City, Maryland.  At the hotel, Liberto worked as a cocktail waitress.  On two occasions within a 24 hour period, Liberto was called a "porch monkey" and threatened with the loss of her job by a white restaurant manager.  The manager also threatened to "get" Liberto and "make her sorry".  After Liberto subsequently reported to higher ups at the hotel about the manager's conduct and the racial harassment, Liberto was fired.

Liberto brought a hostile work environment and retaliation claim against Fontainebleau on the basis of violations of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  The district court awarded summary judgment in favor of Fontainebleau.

Holding:  In its decision to reverse the district court's ruling, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals noted that in order to prevail upon a hostile work environment claim, a claimant must show "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 work environment."  After reviewing the elements of a hostile work environment claim that a claimant must establish in order to prevail, the Court held that even though the complained of conduct in this case were isolated incidents, these racial slurs could establish a hostile work environment as the conduct was "extremely serious."

Judgment:  The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the district court's granting of summary judgment in favor of Fontainebleau and held that two aggressive racial slurs made within a 24 hour period may create a hostile work environment claim. 

The Takeaway:  This was somewhat of a surprising outcome from the Court.  Granted, any racial comment is offensive, but just because there is a racial slur or two does not necessarily mean that a hostile work environment exists.  However, in this case, the Court focused on the severity of the comments, along with the conduct of the manager, and found that sufficient evidence existed to allow the claimant to proceed on her hostile work environment claim.  

Let this case be a lesson to employers:  even isolated incidents can be evidence of a hostile work environment, especially when a Court examines how extreme the conduct of the employer was.  In this case, for instance, such inflammatory comments as "porch monkey" were viewed as an extreme epithet for a hostile work environment claim to proceed.  Be aware of how your managers/supervisors are talking to employees...a few inflammatory comments could spell trouble!

Majority Opinion Judge:  Judge King

Date:  May 7, 2015

Opinion:  http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-4th-circuit/1700313.html

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