The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has expanded its view of what a hostile work environment looks like and lowered the bar in terms of what a plaintiff must show to sufficiently allege a race-based hostile work environment claim under Title VII.
Marie Laurent-Workman, an African American and former career civilian employee of the United States Army initially filed suit in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia alleging multiple counts of discrimination, including on the basis of race, as well as claims for retaliation and hostile work environment against her former employer. Specifically, Laurent-Workman alleged that during her employment with the Army, she was subjected to a hostile work environment due to racially hostile conduct by a white co-worker primarily in the form of derogatory comments, including that “blacks cannot speak properly” and that she “cannot understand them.” Laurent-Workman also alleged she was subjected to a retaliatory hostile work environment by her Army supervisors and claimed she resigned from her position in August 2020 as a result of the alleged conduct.
The Army moved for dismissal on all counts, arguing that the alleged comments by Laurent-Workman’s co-worker did not include racial slurs or physical threats and did not occur daily. The district court agreed and dismissed all six counts in Laurent-Workman’s complaint, finding, in pertinent part, that the alleged conduct was too “sporadic” and neither severe nor related enough to her protected characteristics to state a Title VII race-based hostile work environment claim. Laurent-Workman appealed her case to the Fourth Circuit.
The appellate court, in a unanimous opinion issued in late November, vacated the district court’s dismissal of Laurent-Workman’s race-based hostile work environment claim and remanded those claims to the district court for further proceedings. The Fourth Circuit explained that “[e]ven though they do not depict daily misconduct” and “[a]lthough any one of these allegations does not amount to much when considered in isolation… …Laurent-Workman's allegations demonstrate a series of hateful workplace encounters that consistently targeted her racial identity.”
Instead of daily hostility, the court focused its assessment of the alleged conduct on the discriminatory character, severity and consistency of the harassment and concluded: “Laurent-Workman’s allegations describe just the sort of workplace behaviors that Title VII serves to root out — repeated invectives of an overtly racial tenor.” The judges disagreed with the lower court’s ruling that the alleged conduct was not related enough to her protected characteristics and held that the plaintiff had sufficiently alleged a race-based hostile work environment claim “above the speculative level” to survive a motion to dismiss.
This decision broadens the pleading requirements for plaintiffs alleging Title VII harassment claims in the Fourth Circuit. Consequently employees asserting race-based hostile work environment claims in the Fourth Circuit going forward need only plead facts demonstrating a hostile working environment based “on the overall scenario” to survive a motion to dismiss. It is no longer enough, in other words, to focus on isolated incidents in a vacuum.
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