Opinion ID: 2995181
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Harassment by Supervisors

Text: In line with traditional agency principles, an employer may be held vicariously liable for the acts of those who can be considered an employer’s proxy, such as a president, owner, proprietor, partner, corporate officer, or supervisor ’hold[ing] a sufficiently high position in the management hierarchy of the company for his actions to be imputed automatically to the employer.’ Johnson v. West, 218 F.3d 725, 730 (7th Cir. 2000) (citing Faragher, 524 U.S. at 789-90). Plaintiff alleges harassment on the part of Norsted, the District Administrator, and Sanders, the high school principal./4 Plaintiff alleges that Norsted: 1) promised Fougner that he would get him his job back; 2) tried to force plaintiff to give up her position at the high school so that Fougner could return to it; 3) wrongfully extended her period of probation; 4) insinuated to a friend of plaintiff’s that he should have talked plaintiff out of the move, stating that you know as well as I know that she cannot do the job; 5) conspired with Fougner to assign plaintiff extra maintenance duties; 6) tried to prevent the male maintenance workers from helping her (by criticizing Elkin and Mara for doing more maintenance work at the high school than at other schools); and 7) failed to take action when male custodians made harassing or discriminatory comments in his presence. Plaintiff alleges that Sanders: 1) tried to prevent her from being transferred to the high school for discriminatory reasons; 2) unnecessarily gave her probation; 3) conspired with Fougner to devise a work schedule that there was no way in hell she could complete during the day shift; 4) assigned her tasks that were impossible for one person to complete; 5) failed to respond to her requests for additional help; 6) gave her duties and responsibilities that were not given to the male custodians; 7) failed to take action to force plaintiff’s male co-workers to assist in shoveling snow; 8) beeped plaintiff on a frequent basis to disrupt her work; and 9) spoke to her in a very loud, angry, and abusive manner in front of students and teachers. There is a safe harbor for employers in cases in which the alleged harassing conduct is too tepid or intermittent or equivocal to make a reasonable person believe that she has been discriminated against on the basis of her sex. Galloway v. Gen. Motors Serv. Parts Operations, 78 F.3d 1164, 1168 (7th Cir. 1996). We have continued to recognize such a haven in the post Ellerth/Faragher era. See Hardin v. S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc., 167 F.3d 340, 346 (7th Cir. 1999), cert. denied, 528 U.S. 874, 120 S. Ct. 178, 145 L. Ed. 2d 150 (1999); Adusumilli v. City of Chi., 164 F.3d 353, 362 (7th Cir. 1998). We do not think, however, that this case falls into the safe harbor because the numerous incidents, taken together, could indicate a pervasively hostile work environment. While plaintiff does not allege that Norsted and Sanders made overtly discriminatory comments, there is enough evidence in the record to support an inference of sex discrimination. Thus we proceed to the Ellerth/Faragher framework. An employer is subject to vicarious liability to a victimized employee for an actionable hostile environment created by a supervisor . . . . Faragher, 524 U.S. at 807. A tangible employment action constitutes a significant change in employment status, such as hiring, firing, failing to promote, reassignment with significantly different responsibilities, or a decision causing a significant change in benefits. Ellerth, 524 U.S. at 761; see also Murray v. Chi. Transit Auth., 252 F.3d 880, 887 (7th Cir. 2001); Molnar v. Booth, 229 F.3d 593, 600 (7th Cir. 2000); Ribando v. United Airlines, 200 F.3d 507, 510-11 (7th Cir. 1999). In short, [a] tangible employment action has to cause a substantial detriment to the plaintiff’s employment relationship. Savino v. C.P. Hall Co., 199 F.3d 925, 932 n.8 (7th Cir. 1999). This is akin to the requirement that an employment action must be materially adverse, see id., see also Murray, 252 F.3d at 888, and we have already determined that plaintiff suffered no such action. Cf. Molnar, 229 F.3d at 600 (holding that jury could find that taking art supplies away from plaintiff, who was interning as a junior high school art teacher, was a tangible employment action). Thus we must determine whether the School District is entitled to raise an affirmative defense. The Ellerth/Faragher affirmative defense places the burden on the employer to establish, by a preponderance of the evidence, two elements. See Gentry v. Export Packaging Co., 238 F.3d 842, 846 (7th Cir. 2001); see also Savino, 199 F.3d at 932. First, the employer must establish that it exercised reasonable care to prevent and correct promptly any sexually harassing behavior. Faragher, 524 U.S. at 777-78. One method of demonstrating the exercise of reasonable care is to show the existence of an effective antiharassment policy with complaint procedure. Id. Defendant has stated that a sexual harassment policy with complaint procedure was in place throughout the relevant time period, that this policy was distributed to employees, and that ASD occasionally held in-service meetings with staff to review the policy. Plaintiff has not disputed these facts, nor does she assert that the policy was somehow ineffective or deficient. See id. at 808 (holding that the City could not have exercised reasonable care where it had entirely failed to disseminate its policy and there was no assurance that harassing supervisors could be bypassed in registering complaints); Gentry, 238 F.3d at 847, 848 (holding that a policy must provide for effective grievance mechanisms and that Title VII requires the employer to take[ ] the necessary steps to fully and effectively implement its sexual harassment policy). Instead, she alleges that the District did not exercise reasonable care because it never took any action in response to the complaints made by plaintiff’s husband and co-workers, prior to the time plaintiff filed her ERD complaint. We have considered at least one case in which the plaintiff argued that the employer did not exercise reasonable care because it did not take corrective action prior to the time plaintiff filed her complaint. See Hill v. Am. Gen. Fin. Inc., 218 F.3d 639 (7th Cir. 2000). The plaintiff in Hill sent the company a number of letters in which she represented herself as a customer and complained about her boss’s harassing be havior. See id. at 641. When the human resources department conducted an investigation, it was suspected that the plaintiff-employee had written the letters but she did not acknowledge that she had. See id. Two months after the initial letter, plaintiff finally sent a letter, signed in her own name, setting out the instances of harassment. See id. at 642. We determined that the plaintiff did not notify the company of the harassment until she sent the letter in her own name because the earlier letters were not a reasonable effort at notification and she did not acknowledge that she had written those letters when the company investigated the complaints set out in the letters. Id. at 643. That situation is somewhat distinguishable from a situation such as this, where people complained on plaintiff’s behalf and with plaintiff’s knowledge. In any event, whether we could find that the School District was on notice once Drinkman and plaintiff’s husband complained to the School Board members on plaintiff’s behalf is not an issue we need to resolve today because, even after the Board was notified by plaintiff (when she filed her complaint on September 24, 1998), it did nothing. No internal investigation was pursued and no remedial action was taken. The School District does not attempt to argue otherwise. What the School District does argue, repeatedly, is that plaintiff did not file a written complaint of sexual harassment with the District prior to filing her charge of employment discrimination with the EEOC. This pertains to the second element of the employer’s affirmative defense, in which the employer must show that the plaintiff employee unreasonably failed to take advantage of any preventative or corrective opportunities provided by the employer or to avoid harm otherwise. Faragher, 524 U.S. at 807. An employee’s unreasonable failure to use any complaint procedure provided by the employer would indicate that she failed to fulfill [her] obligation of reasonable care to avoid harm. Id. at 778. Here, however, plaintiff did not fail to take advantage of the Board’s sexual harassment policy. That policy allows complainants to file a charge of discrimination with the Equal Rights Division [i]n addition to or instead of [using the internal] complaint procedure. As the plaintiff’s decision to file an external complaint rather than filing a complaint with the Board was in accordance with the Board’s own policy, the Board can not now allege that plaintiff did not fulfill her obligation of reasonable care. We thus conclude, as a matter of law, that the Board could not be found to have exercised reasonable care to prevent Norsted’s and Sanders’ harassing conduct and is thus not entitled to present an affirmative defense to plaintiff’s claim that she was subjected to a hostile work environment by her supervisors. See Faragher, 524 U.S. at 809.