Week 5
Employment Law II
This week was definitely my favorite, we discussed Harris v. Forklift systems which is an important case that clarifies the legal conditions of a hostile work environment. Throughout the week we spent time reading about how the hostile work environment standard has been developed by the courts over time (Schnapper) and how intersectionality factors into the standard (or rather how it doesn't) in an article written by Saucedo.
Harris v. Forklift Systems, Inc (1993)
Case Brief
Procedural History:
The District Court found in favor of the defendant (Forklift); the Court of Appeals affirmed; Supreme Court reversed and remanded in light of a new rule.
Teresa Harris was a manager at Forklift Systems and the president (her boss) was Charles Hardy. Hardy would frequently berate Harris's position in the company and would insult her intelligence due to her gender. He would frequently make derogatory sexual comments at work towards her in front of employees, Hardy would also make Harris and other women touch him at work and would comment on their appearance's frequently. He promised to stop once, but very quickly returned to make another sexually charged comment towards her in front of a client and employees which prompted her to quit and collect her paycheck.
Issue:
Did the harassment Harris received from her boss Hardy at Forklift Systems constitute an abusive/hostile work environment because of her gender?
Legal Rule Applied:
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act
Analysis
The Supreme Court determined that the decision made by the Court of Appeals was incorrect, even though it was in line with precedent set by the circuit courts; the Supreme Court sought to resolve a conflict in precedent. The district court and the court of appeals decided that a hostile work environment standard established in Meritor v. Vinson required there to be a serious affect to an employee’s “psychological wellbeing”, and that such an effect would have to be proven in order to award damages. The Court went on to elaborate that the Meritor decision includes “requiring people to work in a discriminatorily hostile or abusive environment” in its definition of prohibited behavior under title VII (sec II par. 1) (not just economic or tangible discrimination as was, presumably, understood to be the case before).
The lower courts handling Harris’s case determined that in order for that standard to be met, the plaintiff had to prove that she the suffered psychological damage because of the environment she worked in. The Supreme Court decided that one doesn’t necessarily have to experience the adverse effects of being in an abusive environment in order to have a claim, rather, they require that such an environment has to have been proven to exist at the time of the plaintiff’s employment period. While the court didn’t deny that psychological well-being can be a determining factor in whether or not such an environment constitutes a “hostile” one, the court’s opinion provided other factors that could be considered alongside wellbeing. Factors such as frequency, severity, and the nature of the discriminatory conduct should be considered as well.
Conclusion:
The Court of Appeals erred in its application of the hostile work environment standard; the Supreme Court reversed and remanded the case for further consideration in light of the refined hostile work environment standard developed.
Concurrences:
Scalia: Scalia concurs with the court, but quibbles with the clarity of the “abusive” or “hostile” work environment standard as a violation of title VII. He likes that the court chose to add determinant factors to the standard it ruled on, but fears that even with the added clarity the vagueness of the overarching standard allows for variation on the application of the rule by juries and the courts. He likens an “abusiveness” question to any question of “negligence” but argues that negligence claims can only be made after the fact whereas abusiveness claims (based on this ruling) cannot. Scalia would prefer the court developed an “absolute test” based on whether or not discriminatory treatment interferes with employee work performance, but that his acceptance of the law as it has developed does permit a “basis for such a limitation” (Scalia concurring par. 2).
Ginsburg: Ginsburg refines what she determines to be the critical issue as “whether members of one sex are exposed to disadvantageous terms or conditions of employment to which members of the other sex are not exposed”. Ginsburg argues in favor of judges making a determination on an individual’s work performance as affected by discriminatory conduct, but that “performance” doesn’t always include a decline in productivity. If the harassment alters the work environment to the point of making the job harder to do, that would violate the law; Ginsburg references Davis v. Monsanto to prove her point, though she admits that the case focused on race based discrimination, it’s just as valuable in proving a claim of harassment.
No Dissents
Blog Post
My article is from a newspaper report written in 2009 that covered the story of a lawsuit brought forth by Sandra Guzman, an award winning journalist who wrote for the New York post. The lawsuit brought by her alleged a hostile work environment and the newspaper has various examples of incidents that depict what the environment must’ve been like. Her allegations are striking and really show how intersectionality of race and gender can pervade in a truly hostile environment. According to the article, the “ringleader” was the editor in Chief for the paper, Col Allan. Allan would repeatedly use sexual and racist innuendos and slurs against his female employees. Allan’s racist behavior was known to the employees, and caused other male employees to behave in an openly racist manner. I’m no lawyer and I haven’t read the case, but the workplace at the post must’ve truly constituted a hostile work environment of the allegations proved to be true. Allan was a primary perpetrator, but his behavior encouraged other employees to be openly racist in different ways; for example according to the article, a male employee would walk by Sandra's office would often sing parts of west side story using the blatantly faux Spanish accent. Allan's actions towards Sandra would affect her career as well, for example she got invited to Sotomayor's inauguration party, by Sotomayor personally, for her Supreme Court nomination but (motivated by Allan's distaste for Latino's) Allan denied her the opportunity to report on it for the paper. After Sandra interviewed a latino baseball player, Allan had to ask if he brought a knife or gun to the interview, and Sandra herself is a Latina, which is an hatefully charged question that honestly demonstrated the attitude Allan must have set for the Post. The racism would come out in the paper too, the article cited a comic that depicted Barack Obama as a monkey.
I related this to both of the class articles, but the Saucedo article had a good reference from Rodgers v. Western-Southern Life in terms of what a hostile environment can look like: "the lexicon of obscenity that pervaded the environment of the workplace both before and after the plaintiff's introduction into its environs". Sandra's case, if it prevailed, clearly sounds like the type of environment where this type of hatred is tolerated and festers to the point where it "pervades" all aspects of the environment.