Opinion ID: 3173555
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: National-Origin-Based Harassment

Text: To survive summary judgment on a claim of national-origin-based hostile work environment, a plaintiff must show harassment stemming from animus toward her national origin. Hernandez, 684 F.3d at 960. Although evidence of animus directed at a plaintiff’s particular nationality provides the strongest evidence of a hostile work environment, “evidence of a general work atmosphere, including evidence of harassment of other [nationalities], may be considered in evaluating a claim, as long as [plaintiff] presents evidence that [s]he knew about the offending behavior.” Tademy v. Union Pac. Corp., 614 F.3d 1132, 1146 (10th Cir. 2008) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Hernandez, 684 F.3d at 959 (“[D]erogatory comments need not be directed at or intended to be received by the victim to be evidence of a hostile work environment.”). Moreover, “facially neutral abusive conduct can support a finding of [national-origin-based] animus sufficient to sustain a hostile work environment claim when that conduct is viewed in the context of other, overtly . . . discriminatory conduct.” Hernandez, 684 F.3d at 960 (brackets and internal quotation marks omitted). Thus, courts evaluating a hostile-workenvironment claim must avoid viewing individual instances of hostility in isolation but instead must look to the “totality of the circumstances.” Id. at 959 (internal quotation marks omitted); see also McCowan v. All Star Maint., Inc., 273 F.3d 917, 925 (10th Cir. 2001) (“[W]hen we examine the context of this Title VII claim, we look at both specific hostility targeting Plaintiffs as well as the general work atmosphere.”). 12 In this case, Ms. Unal presents three categories of evidence that she contends create a genuine issue of national-origin-based harassment: (1) comments or conduct that were overtly based on her nationality, (2) hostile comments made about people of other nationalities, and (3) facially-neutral conduct demonstrating she was treated differently than her U.S.-born peers. As to the first category, Ms. Unal produced evidence of three instances when Ms. Vandenkieboom and other staff members made derogatory comments to Ms. Unal based on her nationality. On one occasion, Ms. Vandenkieboom questioned why Ms. Unal would attend a school Christmas concert, but thanked other teachers for their attendance, and on a separate occasion Ms. Vandenkieboom excluded Ms. Unal from a conversation about an American movie because Ms. Unal is “not from here.” Additionally, a different staff member once called Ms. Unal a “turkey from Turkey.” The district court concluded the only direct comment about Ms. Unal’s nationality was the “turkey from Turkey” comment. But the district court failed to consider the reasonable inference that Ms. Vandenkieboom’s comments, when taken in context, were intended to emphasize negatively Ms. Unal’s status as a foreigner.3 And although Ms. Vandenkieboom’s comment at the Christmas concert could be interpreted as demonstrating animus toward Ms. Unal based on her Muslim faith, 3 Excluding Ms. Unal from the discussion about the movie would do little, standing alone, to advance her hostile work environment claim. But when combined with the other two incidents, it provides some evidence that she was targeted based on her national origin. 13 Turkey’s status as a predominantly Muslim country4 effectively intertwines Ms. Unal’s religion and nationality. See Hassan v. City of New York, 804 F.3d 277, 303 (3d Cir. 2015) (“The history of religious discrimination in the United States is intertwined with that based on other protected characteristics, including national origin and race.”). Thus, a jury could reasonably infer from this comment that Ms. Vandenkieboom harbored animus toward Ms. Unal because of her national origin. Second, Ms. Unal’s evidence of harassing comments directed at other nationalities will support an inference of a national-origin-based hostile work environment if Ms. Unal was present when they were made or otherwise became aware of them “during the time that she was allegedly subject to a hostile work environment.” Hirase-Doi v. U.S. W. Commc’ns, Inc., 61 F.3d 777, 782 (10th Cir. 1995); superseded on other grounds by Faragher v. City of Boca Raton, 524 U.S. 775 (1998); accord Tademy, 614 F.3d at 1146. Ms. Unal knew of the following comments or conduct directed at other nationalities: Ms. Vandenkieboom’s use of the term “little people” to refer to a Vietnamese family; staff members’ use of feigned foreign accents to make school-wide announcements while other staff members laughed at this conduct; and an instance where some staff members mocked an Asian family based on their surname Fu. There is no evidence, however, that Ms. Unal was aware during the relevant time period that staff members had joked that the “valley people” 4 See Middle East: Turkey, CIA World Factbook (Dec. 10, 2015), https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/tu.html (listing Turkey’s religious make-up as 99.8% Muslim, 0.2% other). 14 would steal from them during a power outage or that staff members had made other racially discriminatory comments about Hispanic and Native American students.5 Therefore, we may not consider these comments in assessing the environment at Aspen Elementary. Notwithstanding this limitation, we are convinced that the comments directed at other nationalities of which Ms. Unal was aware support an inference that the administration at Aspen Elementary maintained a culture of animus towards foreign-born individuals. Finally, Ms. Unal relies on several instances of facially neutral conduct that she argues support an inference of hostility based on her national origin. In assessing the totality of the evidence supporting a hostile-work-environment claim, “what is important . . . is the environment, and [facially] neutral harassment makes up an important part of the relevant work environment.” Hernandez, 684 F.3d at 960 (internal quotation marks omitted). Therefore, “when a plaintiff introduces evidence of both [facially discriminatory] and [facially] neutral harassment, and when a jury, viewing the evidence in context, reasonably could view all of the allegedly harassing conduct as the product of [national-origin] hostility, then it is for the fact finder to decide whether such an inference should be drawn.” Id. (ellipsis and internal quotation marks omitted). 5 For instance, Ms. Unal relies on Ms. Vandenkieboom’s derogatory comments about Hispanic students and Ms. Vandenkieboom’s decision to send the police to the homes of Hispanic families who had not returned a waiver form. Although Ms. Unal learned about these comments prior to the filing of her EEOC complaint, she did not hear any of the comments directly, and she has not pointed to anything in the record demonstrating that she was aware of these comments during the time period in which she was allegedly subject to a hostile work environment. 15 In this case, Ms. Unal presented evidence of various facially neutral incidents that a jury could view as products of national-origin hostility. The evidence shows that Ms. Vandenkieboom (1) solicited negative feedback about Ms. Unal from a substitute teacher, but did not do so with respect to other teachers; (2) discounted Ms. Unal’s knowledge and expertise concerning the GATE program, as evidenced by her failure to include Ms. Unal in GATE communications; (3) excused other teachers from attending Ms. Unal’s IEP meetings but made no such exception for attendance at other teachers’ IEP meetings; (4) let several months pass before assigning Ms. Unal her own instructional assistant but immediately assigned an instructional assistant to a U.S.-born teacher who accepted a large class size; (5) regularly corrected Ms. Unal’s pronunciation in front of other staff members; and (6) entered Ms. Unal’s classroom unannounced and, without explanation, required her to move her class to a portable classroom. These seemingly neutral incidents “cannot simply be discarded” because they were not discriminatory on their face. Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). Instead, we must view them in relation to the totality of the circumstances because they “must be weighed on the side of reasonable inferences.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). The relevant circumstances here include Ms. Unal’s status as the school’s only foreign-born teacher, Ms. Vandenkieboom’s disparate treatment of other teachers, and evidence showing a culture of animus towards individuals of different national origin. Viewing all the evidence together, in context, a reasonable jury could conclude that these facially neutral incidents were products of a larger environment 16 of hostility toward foreign-born individuals like Ms. Unal. We therefore conclude that Ms. Unal presented sufficient evidence at summary judgment from which a reasonable jury could conclude the harassment she experienced was based on her national origin.