Opinion ID: 782965
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Retaliatory harassment by Alvey

Text: 31 Although the district court failed to consider whether Alvey's post-complaint harassment was retaliatory, this court has previously held that severe or pervasive supervisor harassment following a sexual-harassment complaint can constitute retaliation for the purposes of a Title VII action. Morris, 201 F.3d at 792. Because the court's decision in Morris was an extrapolation of Supreme Court precedent allowing a Title VII action to be based upon severe or pervasive supervisory harassment in the sexual-harassment context, the standard for severe or pervasive harassment is the same in the retaliation context as in the sexual and racial discrimination contexts. Broska v. Henderson, 2003 WL 21518733, at  (June 30, 2003). Under this standard, the harassment must be sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of the victim's employment and create an abusive working environment. Harris v. Forklift Sys., Inc., 510 U.S. 17, 21, 114 S.Ct. 367, 126 L.Ed.2d 295 (1993) (citation omitted). As this court noted in Broska, this test has both an objective and a subjective component: the conduct must be severe or pervasive enough to create an environment that a reasonable person would find hostile or abusive, and the victim must subjectively regard that environment as hostile or abusive. Broska, at . 32 The Cabinet responds to Akers's retaliatory harassment claim by arguing that Alvey was removed as Akers's supervisor immediately following the conclusion of its investigation of Akers's complaint to the Cabinet, and that any harassment that may have occurred following Akers's complaint was not severe or pervasive enough to support a retaliation claim. All of the incidents giving rise to Akers's complaint about retaliation occurred during the two-week period that the Cabinet took to investigate her charges. In Morris, the supervisor in question engaged in retaliatory conduct that was much more severe and pervasive than that alleged in this case, including calling the plaintiff over 30 times for the sole purpose of harassing her, sitting outside her office staring in her window, and throwing nails onto her home driveway on more than one occasion. Id. at 793. The court in Morris distinguished that case from the simple teasing, offhand comments, and isolated incidents that [the Supreme Court in] Faragher indicated did not amount to discriminatory changes in the terms and conditions of a plaintiff's employment. Id. at 793. 33 Alvey's alleged post-complaint conduct (i.e., ignoring Akers, encouraging her coworkers to do the same, criticizing her work, and withholding her mail) falls somewhere in between the egregious conduct in Morris and simple teasing or offhand comments. The alleged retaliation was confined to the two weeks during which the Cabinet was diligently investigating Akers's complaint and despite the Cabinet's circulation of a memo in the Grayson County office instructing that no retaliation would be tolerated. Due to the short duration and relatively mild nature of the post-complaint harassment, as well as the Cabinet's directive prohibiting retaliatory conduct, we do not believe that there is sufficient evidence for a jury to find that Alvey's alleged harassment reached the level of severe or pervasive conduct required by Morris for a retaliation claim.