Opinion ID: 1975483
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Public Factors

Text: Blake alleged that PTC, through Boswell, created a hostile work environment which extended beyond the office setting in Arlington where Blake primarily worked, to include a year-long off-hours relationship during which Boswell used her authority as office director and supervisor to attempt to coerce sexual favors. As the trial judge acknowledged, there is no question that this entire course of alleged conduct, much of which occurred in the District, would be relevant to Blake's claim of discrimination under the DCHRA. See, e.g., Matthews, supra ; Howard Univ. v. Best, 484 A.2d 958, 976-84 (D.C.1984). Yet, in evaluating the public factors relevant to inconvenient forum analysis  essentially in asking whether the District has so little to do with this case that its courts should decline to hear it, Jimmerson, supra,  the trial judge focused largely on the impact Boswell's actions had on Blake's employment, pointing to the fact that [t]he decisions not to promote [Blake] and to terminate her were made in Virginia or at corporate headquarters in Virginia. [5] We think this emphasis unduly truncated Blake's claim  which alleged both creation of a pervasively hostile work environment and retaliation for her rejection of Boswell's sexual demands  and thus diminished the weight of the contacts between her suit and the District of Columbia. The trial judge also determined that PTC's business in the District of Columbia was limited, relative to the amount of business [it] conducted in Virginia. Although that is true, the judge did not conclude, nor do we think she reasonably could have, that Virginia's interest in enforcing its laws against job discrimination would exceed the District's in enforcing the DCHRA on facts such as this case alleges. Boswell was a resident of the District of Columbia; much of the alleged use of her superior position to coerce favors originated from her home; and her status as a PTC director and supervisor is what implicates the corporation in conduct forbidden by the District's anti-discrimination statute. See Burlington Indus., Inc. v. Ellerth, 524 U.S. 742, 762, 118 S.Ct. 2257, 141 L.Ed.2d 633 (1998) (a tangible employment action, which is the means by which [a] supervisor brings the official power of the enterprise to bear on subordinates[,]... becomes for Title VII purposes the act of the employer). [6] For these reasons, none of the Gulf Oil public factors can reasonably be said to have warranted dismissal of Blake's suit. It is not a controversy local to Virginia which that state has a paramount interest in resolving; it will not burden the Superior Court with the congest[ion of] foreign litigation; and it will not unfairly impose on District citizens the duty to adjudicate a matter having no relation to the District of Columbia. Coulibaly, 728 A.2d at 601. Whatever its ultimate merits, Blake's suit alleging a sustained pattern of sexual harassment in the District by a senior officer of PTC who resides in the District is one that reasonably invokes the resources of the District of Columbia courts.