Dive Brief:
- A male theater manager’s repeated invitations to a female employee to dine with him did not constitute hostile-work-environment sexual harassment because they were sporadic and did not involve explicit pressure or sexual conduct, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held Nov. 25.
- The plaintiff in Wargo v. MJR Patridge Creek Digital Cinema 14 cited the invites, which she declined, as evidence of harassment. The invites included text messages to the plaintiff’s private phone number in which the manager allegedly said, in part, that he would teach the plaintiff “all that I know” and “[y]ou just have to trust me, and my methods.”
- The plaintiff claimed that the messages contained sexual undertones, but the court disagreed. It held that the messages came immediately after a routine work discussion and that they — taken together with a later altercation between the two — could not show evidence of severe or pervasive harassment, nor would a reasonable person believe that the workplace was hostile or abusive.
Dive Insight:
In its analysis, the 6th Circuit took note of the theater’s response to an internal complaint submitted by the plaintiff. The complaint followed the alleged altercation, in which the plaintiff claimed that the manager slammed a piece of paper and, in an effort to prevent her from leaving the room in which they were arguing, blocked the door and briefly touched her arm.
Upon receiving and investigating the complaint, the theater found that both parties acted inappropriately and issued both written warnings. It required them to review company sexual harassment and bullying policies, and it placed the manager on a 90-day performance improvement plan. The plaintiff, meanwhile, was offered and accepted an opportunity to transfer to a different theater. Ultimately, the theater determined that no sexual harassment took place.
The theater also directed the plaintiff to bring any future complaints from other employees directly to HR and prohibited her from speaking about such complaints with co-workers. The employer later fired the plaintiff in part because she allegedly violated this directive.
The 6th Circuit ultimately decided that the plaintiff’s claims did not establish liability for a hostile work environment despite her belief that manager’s behavior constituted sex-based harassment.
“At the end of the day, [the plaintiff] asks us to impose liability by simply accepting her subjective interpretation of [her manager’s] words and actions,” the court said. “But that’s not the law.”
Other courts have similarly struck down claims based on subjective interpretations of workplace behavior. In September, for example, a Pennsylvania federal judge held that a reasonable person could not interpret a supervisor’s whispered comments about the uniqueness of the plaintiff’s voice to be derogatory or harassing.
According to U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidance, harassment is actionable under federal antidiscrimination laws if it is so severe or frequent that a reasonable person would find the decision to be abusive. Personality conflicts, disagreements and other forms of incompatibility are generally not covered, EEOC has said.
In investigating harassment, employers should conclude by issuing a formal conclusion memorialized in writing and, if necessary, take corrective action to address substantiated concerns, one attorney wrote in an op-ed for HR Dive. Investigations also serve as opportunities to train managers and highlight antiharassment policies.