concluding that actionable hostile work environment includes “general hostility to the presence of women in the workplace”
How later courts described this case
- concluding that actionable hostile work environment includes “general hostility to the presence of women in the workplace”
- explaining that “the statute does not reach genuine but innocuous differences in the ways men and women routinely interact with members of the same sex and of the opposite sex. The prohibition of harassment on the basis of sex requires neither asexuality nor androgyny in the workplace; it forbids only behavior so objectively offensive as to alter the ‘conditions’ of the victim’s employment.”
- explaining, in same-sex harassment case involving allegations of “sex-related, humiliating actions,” a physical assault done in a “sexual manner,” and a threat of rape, that “[i]n ... all[ ] harassment cases, [the relevant] inquiry requires careful consideration of the social context in which particular behavior occurs and is experienced by its target”
- stating that when the harassing con- duct is not motivated by sexual desire, an inference of gender- motivated harassment may still be derived if a victim "is harassed in such sex-specific and derogatory terms . . . as to make it clear that the harasser is motivated by general hostility to the presence of women [or men] in the [educational setting]"
Written by the judges who cited it.
Distinguished
Distinguished by Beale v. Mount Vernon Police Department, 895 F. Supp. 2d 576 (2012)
Co. v. White, 548 U.S. 53, 68, 126 S.Ct. 2405, 165 L.Ed.2d 345 (2006) (quoting Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Servs., Inc., 523 U.S. 75, 80, 118 S.Ct. 998, 140 L.Ed.2d 201 (1998)), and is inapplicable to “complaints attacking the ordinary tribulations of the workplace, such as the sporadic use of abusive language, gender-related jokes, and occasional teasing,” Faragher v. City of Boca Raton, 524 U.S. 775, 788, 118 S.Ct…
The opinion
Justice Thomas,
concurring.
I concur because the Court stresses that in every sexual harassment ease, the plaintiff must plead and ultimately prove Title VII’s statutory requirement that there be discrimination “because of... sex.”