Opinion ID: 56302
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Ayanna Harrington

Text: Harrington alleges that she was subject to a hostile work environment because she was subjected to (1) unfair discipline, (2) managerial harassment, (3) intimidation by two white managers, and (4) co-worker’s racial epithets. The racially-motivated discipline allegations arise from the treatment she received, including the suspension, after the two incidents where she was accused of using racially-charged language herself. The managerial harassments claims arose from a litany of complaints about how managers treated her during her work, but she presented no evidence that the treatment she received was racially-motivated. The incident of alleged intimidation occurred when two white managers “cornered” Harrington in a doorway and told her they wanted to see her in the office. She claims she asked them to step back but they continued to approach her and did not 29 stop until she screamed a third time. As the magistrate noted, in the five months that Harrington worked at ESPN Zone, she heard several co-workers and a manager describe her as ghetto and overheard manager Zapf tell several AfricanAmerican employees they looked like monkeys. The magistrate found that Harrington satisfied the subjective component but not the objective component of the harassment standard. The most frequent conduct, the use of the term “ghetto,” was not found to be severe, while the only physically threatening incident, the “cornering,” was isolated and not clearly racially motivated. Moreover, the magistrate found that Harrington could not demonstrate that the environment interfered with her job performance. The evidence in the record supports the magistrate’s decision. Much of the conduct Harrington complains of is not connected to her race, and the only conduct that is racially offensive, being called “ghetto” and once or twice overhearing coworkers being described as monkeys, was not pervasive enough to alter her conditions of employment. In particular, Harrington did not establish how often she was described as “ghetto” or overheard racial epithets directed towards coworkers—although it appears such incidents were infrequent—and thus, she did not carry her burden of demonstrating a triable issue concerning the severity and pervasiveness of the racially offensive conduct. 30