Opinion ID: 3049613
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Craig’s prima facie case

Text: Byrd’s conduct clearly satisfies the first two prongs of the Fuller test. Byrd’s behavior was explicitly sexual in nature, and unwelcome, as Craig repeatedly rebuffed his advances and eventually reported his conduct to the company. We also find that Byrd’s conduct meets the requirement of being both subjectively and objectively abusive. Craig testified that she felt Byrd’s comments and actions—particularly the incident in the bathroom—were abusive and made her feel uncomfortable. The conduct also met the objective standard: A reason9524 CRAIG v. M&O AGENCIES, INC. able woman in Craig’s position could feel that Byrd’s comments and actions were hostile, demeaning and abusive. [5] Craig’s prima facie showing turns on whether or not Byrd’s actions were pervasive and serious enough to amount to “a change in the terms and conditions of employment.” Faragher, 524 U.S. at 788. The Supreme Court has cautioned that “simple teasing, offhand comments, and isolated incidents (unless extremely serious) will not amount to discriminatory changes in the terms and conditions of employment.”2 Id. (internal citation and quotation marks omitted); see also Candelore v. Clark County Sanitation Dist., 975 F.2d 588, 590 (9th Cir. 1992) (per curiam) (finding “isolated incidents of sexual horseplay” insufficient to make a working environment “hostile”). Appellees draw our attention to some of our prior cases to suggest that conduct must be more egregious than Byrd’s in order to sustain an action under Title VII. See, e.g., Little v. Windermere Relocation, Inc., 301 F.3d 958, 96768 (9th Cir. 2002) (involving a plaintiff who was raped three times in one night by a business associate whose actions were essentially condoned by the employer); Draper v. Coeur Rochester, Inc., 147 F.3d 1104, 1105-06 (9th Cir. 1998) (involving an employee who made sexual remarks to a female co-worker over the loudspeakers at work and commented about her body to male co-workers). Although these shocking examples amply illustrate a level of conduct that is sufficient, they do not establish minimum behavior. We are not persuaded that Title VII requires proof of such severe or shocking behavior. [6] We have repeatedly held that sexual-based conduct that is abusive, humiliating or threatening is sufficient to make a prima facie claim under Title VII and have found liability in 2 Factors a court may consider are “the frequency of the discriminatory conduct; its severity; whether it is physically threatening or humiliating, or a mere offensive utterance; and whether it unreasonably interferes with an employee’s work performance.” Harris, 510 U.S. at 23. CRAIG v. M&O AGENCIES, INC. 9525 situations where the conduct was much less onerous than Byrd’s propositions. See, e.g., Ellison v. Brady, 924 F.2d 872, 873, 880 (9th Cir. 1991) (reversing a summary judgment grant for the employer, finding that a reasonable woman could find a colleague’s misguided “love letter” hostile and abusive, and holding that “[w]ell-intentioned compliments by coworkers or supervisors can form the basis of a sexual harassment cause of action”); Steiner v. Showboat Operating Co., 25 F.3d 1459, 1461-63 (9th Cir. 1994) (reversing a grant of summary judgment where a plaintiff’s supervisor called her “offensive names based on her gender,” confronted her in front of other employees and customers and criticized her using derogatory, gender-based language); Fuller, 47 F.3d at 1522, 1527-28 (reversing a grant of summary judgment for the defendant city, finding that the behavior of plaintiff’s exboyfriend—repeatedly calling her house and hanging up, threatening to kill himself, running her off the road and getting her unlisted number—constituted an actionable claim under Title VII). [7] Byrd’s conduct falls somewhere between mere isolated incidents or offhand comments, which do not amount to a Title VII claim, see, e.g., Brooks v. City of San Mateo, 229 F.3d 917 (9th Cir. 2000); Kortan v. Cal. Youth Auth., 217 F.3d 1104, 1106 (9th Cir. 2000), and serious and pervasive harassment, that clearly comes within Title VII, see, e.g., Draper, 147 F.3d at 1105-06. Although Byrd’s actions were physically less threatening than those at issue in Fuller, Byrd’s position as Craig’s immediate boss made his actions emotionally and psychologically threatening; repeated pressure to perform sexual favors for one’s boss is certainly more coercive than the misguided “love letter” at issue in Ellison. Craig was not subjected to Byrd’s comments and propositions for a period of years, however, the time period over which it occurred was not de minimis. The harassing behavior included repeated comments several months before the bathroom encounter and included at least four significant incidents after. Byrd’s actions, when viewed from his perspective, 9526 CRAIG v. M&O AGENCIES, INC. might seem innocuous enough, but when viewed from the perspective of a “reasonable woman,” his behavior could be understood to be so obnoxious that it “unreasonably interferes with work performance” and, consequently, “can alter a condition of employment and create an abusive working environment.” Ellison, 924 F.2d at 877; see also Steiner, 25 F.3d at 1463. [8] Craig alleges that Byrd’s actions resulted in a concrete change in her working environment. Specifically, she alleges she was removed from many of her duties, received budgets late, had some of her duties reassigned, and was forced to interact with Byrd despite his continued propositions. She claims that these additional stresses in the workplace made her nervous, spawned anxiety attacks and affected her health. Each of her complaints standing alone might not satisfy the standard, but in the aggregate, they are sufficiently serious to amount to an alteration in her condition of employment. We do not know if Craig’s claim will ultimately persuade the trier of fact. However, when viewing the facts in the record in the light most favorable to the non-moving party, we conclude that Craig has alleged sufficient facts to state a prima facie case for a violation of Title VII.