Employee prevails in proving hostile work environment

• Date: 01 August 2019
• Published date: 01 August 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/nba.30641

NONPROFIT BUSINESS ADVISOR AUGUST 2019

10 © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc., A Wiley Company • All rights reserved

DOI: 10.1002/nba

Employment Law

Here’s a look at several recent notable lawsuits involving nonprots. Nonprots should regularly review

employment laws and their compliance efforts to avert similar issues.

Hostile work environment

Employee prevails in proving hostile work

environment

The plaintiff began working as a maintenance clerk

for the Housing Authority of Baltimore City in 1994.

In June 2016, the plaintiff complained to the

administration that a new supervisor that had been

assigned to her at the beginning of the year had made

sexually explicit and lewd comments to her on an

almost-daily basis.

Even though that supervisor was red a short while

later, the plaintiff led a suit that made several claims.

One was a hostile work environment.

She alleged the HABC was aware of her supervi-

sor’s misconduct because employees in several depart-

ments had previously complained for weeks about

his constant inappropriate sexual remarks, and also

because he had been red from an earlier job because

of sexual harassment.

The plaintiff claimed she had been reluctant to

complain because the supervisor’s cousin was the

human resources director, but she nally did in June

2016 after becoming convinced that he was harassing

other female employees.

The authority led a motion to dismiss, arguing:

(1) it didn’t know about any harassment prior to the

plaintiff’s June 2016 complaint, (2) it acted promptly

in response to that complaint and (3) the supervisor’s

alleged comments were not sufciently severe or per-

vasive to constitute sexual harassment.

The district court judge said a plaintiff claiming a

hostile work environment must show there was un-

welcome conduct imputable to the employer that was

based on sex and/or race, and was sufciently severe

or pervasive to alter the conditions of employment.

The judge also said deciding whether harassment

was sufciently severe or pervasive required him to

look at the frequency of the conduct, its severity,

whether it was physically threatening or humiliat-

ing and whether it unreasonably interfered with an

employee’s work performance.

EMPLOYEE WINS ➔ The judge concluded that

the plaintiff had sufciently stated a hostile work

environment claim against the HABC because: (1)

the supervisor allegedly made sexually explicit, lewd

and humiliating comments to her on an almost-daily

basis over a period of weeks; (2) she never responded

positively to them; (3) she isolated herself at work to

avoid having contact with him; and (4) his conduct

affected her productivity.

He also ruled the HABC was responsible for those

purported actions because it was allegedly aware

of that misconduct from employee complaints; his

prior job history of ter mination for similar conduct;

the alleged offender was her supervisor during the

time he was making these remarks; and the conduct

was based upon the protected characteristic of the

plaintiff’s gender.

[Dawson v. Housing Authority of Baltimore City, et

al., U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland,

No. 18-1442, 01/10/2019].

FMLA

Court rules employer at fault in FMLA

case

A few months after the director of national intel-

ligence hired her as an operations analyst in 2011, the

plaintiff informed two of her supervisors that she had

recently been diagnosed with depression.

The plaintiff successfully dealt with her condi-

tion for years with medication and counseling, and

became a valued and outstanding employee.

However, she began frequently arriving quite late

to work in early 2015. In addition, she racked up a

lot of unplanned absences. According to her supervi-

sors, the plaintiff seemed “lethargic or almost uncon-

cerned” about both her tardiness and her absences.

Around that same time, the plaintiff informed her

supervisors that she had a recent change in medication.

The plaintiff and her supervisors came up with a

couple of different plans to accommodate her prob-

lems. However, none of them worked.

In April, the plaintiff’s supervisors referred her to

the Employee Assistance Program, which was a vol-

untary and condential counseling service available

to all employees without charge.

At that time, the plaintiff explained to her supervi-

sors that her psychiatrist had recommended she take

four weeks of medical leave. However, the supervisors

insisted she had to meet with the EAP before they