Opinion ID: 2812341
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Retaliatory Hostile Work Environment Claim

Text: Plaintiff Redd’s final argument on appeal is that the district court erred in granting UPS summary judgment on his retaliatory hostile working environment claim. Redd contends that UPS transferred Diaz, “a known serial harasser with pending EEOC charges against him,” to Redd’s division in order to create a hostile work environment in retaliation for Redd’s October 2008 internal complaint against former Division Manager Mowery. 5 We agree with the district court that UPS was entitled to summary judgment on Redd’s retaliatory hostile work environment claim. Redd again has failed to show a causal connection between his protected activity and the alleged adverse employment action. To the extent that Redd alleges that Division Manager Diaz’s actions while overseeing the Birmingham package center created a hostile work 4 Alternatively, for all the reasons discussed above as to pretext with regard to Redd’s race discrimination claim based on his demotion, see discussion supra Part IV.B, we reject Redd’s arguments that he showed that UPS’s proffered reason for his demotion was a pretext, see Shannon, 292 F.3d at 715 (explaining that once a plaintiff establishes a prima facie case of retaliation and the defendant produces a legitimate reason for the adverse employment action, the plaintiff must show that the reason the defendant gave was pretextual). 5 This Court recognizes a retaliatory hostile work environment claim. See Gowski v. Peake, 682 F.3d 1299, 1311-12 (11th Cir. 2012). The relevant question is whether a reasonable jury could find that the defendant subjected the plaintiff to a hostile work environment in retaliation for protected activity. See id. at 1312. 21 Case: 14-14945 Date Filed: 06/26/2015 Page: 22 of 22 environment, there was no evidence that Diaz knew about Redd’s protected activity in making the October 2008 internal complaint. See Shannon, 292 F.3d at 716. To the extent that Redd argues that UPS transferred Diaz to his package center to create a hostile work environment in retaliation for Redd’s protected activity, Redd has failed to show temporal proximity between the protected activity and the allegedly adverse action. See Thomas, 506 F.3d at 1364. Redd filed his internal complaint in October 2008, almost a year before UPS transferred Diaz to Redd’s package center in Fall 2009.