Opinion ID: 764135
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Did Clover Engage in Protected Conduct Under the Opposition Clause?

Text: 17 Clover contends that the statements she made in her meeting with Hollingsworth and Calhoun constituted opposition to an unlawful employment practice, namely, sexual harassment. At the meeting, Clover says she described acts that she believed to have been inappropriate or unusual behavior for a member of senior management [i.e., Pettis]. Specifically, she testified that she told Hollingsworth and Calhoun that Pettis engaged in the following conduct: 18
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20 (iii) Pettis would sometimes knock on the department door where Waters, Clover and other employees worked to get Waters' attention and to call Waters out into the hall to talk. However, if Clover or another worker looked up, Pettis would dart behind the door out of sight. 21 (iv) Pettis hung up the phone on anybody who answered other than Waters during the day. 22 (v) Waters responded to the attention of Pettis in a flirting kind of style. 23 Clover claims that her answers and statements during the interview constitute opposition to an unlawful employment practice. We assume for present purposes that answering questions in such an interview can constitute opposition. 24 The parties agree that an employee who seeks protection under the opposition clause must have a good faith, reasonable belief that her employer has engaged in unlawful discrimination. See Little v. United Techs., Carrier Transicold Div., 103 F.3d 956, 960 (11th Cir.1997). TSYS concedes that Clover had a good faith belief that TSYS engaged in unlawful sexual harassment, but argues that her belief was not objectively reasonable. We agree. 25 The objective reasonableness of an employee's belief that her employer has engaged in an unlawful employment practice must be measured against existing substantive law. See Harper v. Blockbuster Entertainment Corp., 139 F.3d 1385, 1388 n. 2 (11th Cir.1998) (failure to charge the employee who opposes an employment practice with substantive knowledge of the law would eviscerate the objective component of our reasonableness inquiry). 26 To establish a hostile environment claim premised on sexual harassment, a plaintiff must establish, among other things, that the harassment occurred because of her sex, and that the harassment was sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of her employment and create an abusive working environment. Watkins v. Bowden, 105 F.3d 1344, 1355 (11th Cir.1997). Clover contends that her belief that Pettis engaged in sexual harassment attributable to TSYS was objectively reasonable based on the nature of [Pettis'] conduct in connection with [Waters,] a seventeen year old high school student combined with Pettis' position in the company [as an assistant vice-president.] However, the disparity between Pettis' and Waters' ages and positions in the company does not make Clover's belief objectively reasonable. None of the conduct that Clover described comes anywhere near constituting sexual harassment, regardless of the relative positions of the employees involved. As the Supreme Court recently stated: 27 [T]he 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. 28 Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Servs., Inc., 523 U.S. 75, 118 S.Ct. 998, 1002-03, 140 L.Ed.2d 201 (1998). The Supreme Court has said that the conduct in question must be severe or pervasive enough that a reasonable person would find it hostile or abusive. That requirement is crucial to ensur[ing] that courts and juries do not mistake ordinary socializing in the workplace--such as ... intersexual flirtation--for discriminatory 'conditions of employment.'  Id. at 1003. 29 We do not mean to hold that the conduct opposed must actually be sexual harassment, but it must be close enough to support an objectively reasonable belief that it is. The conduct Clover described misses the mark by a country mile. It follows that Clover's belief the conduct created a sexually hostile environment for Waters was not objectively reasonable. Similarly, Clover could not have formed an objectively reasonable belief that Pettis, or anyone else, had subjected Waters to quid pro quo sexual harassment because she failed to relate any facts at all supporting such a claim. 30 Nor does the fact that Pettis engaged in conduct which led Waters to file an EEOC complaint and for the company to initiate an in-house investigation alter our conclusion that Clover could not have held an objectively reasonable belief she was opposing an unlawful employment practice. To begin with, the company's in-house investigation, which began before Clover was interviewed, was not based on anything Clover said but instead was a response to the EEOC complaint Waters had filed. 31 Moreover, for purposes of determining whether Clover satisfied the objective reasonableness component of the test it is critical to distinguish between the conduct that Clover opposed, i.e., what she saw or heard and then reported during the in-house interview, and the actual conduct Waters experienced and reported in her complaint to the EEOC. There is nothing in the record to suggest that the two are the same. For opposition clause purposes, the relevant conduct does not include conduct that actually occurred--or that was averred in an EEOC complaint by the alleged victim--but was unknown to the person claiming protection under the clause. Instead, what counts is only the conduct that person opposed, which cannot be more than what she was aware of. Additional conduct or allegations unknown to the opposing person are not relevant to the opposition clause inquiry. Clover's belief that the conduct she described created a sexually hostile environment was objectively unreasonable. Therefore, she did not engage in statutorily protected conduct under the opposition clause. 2 32