Opinion ID: 170506
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Union Pacific's Response

Text: We now consider whether a reasonable jury could also find Union Pacific liable under Title VII because the company condone[d] or tolerate[d] the creation of [a racially hostile] environment. Lockard, 162 F.3d at 1073. On this issue, Mr. Tademy advances a negligence theory under which the employer fails to remedy a hostile work environment it knew or should have known about. Hollins, 238 F.3d at 1258 (internal quotation marks omitted). Our assessment of Union Pacific's response proceeds in two steps. We begin by taking account of the instances of discrimination that should have reasonably put Union Pacific on notice that the Salt Lake unit had a problem with the types of discrimination Mr. Tademy alleges. We then address the adequacy of the company's response in light of the discrimination about which Union Pacific knew or reasonably should have known.
Because an employer is only potentially liable for negligence in remedying and preventing harassment of which it negligently failed to discover, courts must make two inquiries: first into the employer's actual or constructive knowledge of harassment, and second, into the adequacy of the employer's remedial and preventative responses to any actually or constructively known harassment. Adler, 144 F.3d at 673. We have held that [a]ctual knowledge will be demonstrable in most cases where the plaintiff has reported harassment to management-level employees. Id. When a management-level employee has not been notified, this court applies what amounts to a negligence standard: highly pervasive harassment should, in the exercise of reasonable care, be discovered by management-level employees. Id. In this case, the following acts of harassment were reported to Union Pacific's management-level employees: (1) the word nigger written on Mr. Tademy's locker; (2) the work nigger written on a restroom wall; (3) the Sambo cartoon and the words the nigger swimming pool placed on a restroom wall; (4) the words hang all niggers and jews written in a bathroom; (5) the F  ing Kunte Kinte incident, (6) the Cagle boy incident, (7) the slaves email, (8) and the Erickson noose incident. In addition, in evaluating Union Pacific's response to Mr. Tademy's complaints, we must also take into account reports by other employees that should have put the company on notice that discriminatory conduct of the type Mr. Tademy reported. In determining whether to consider acts alleged by other employees, we look to [t]he extent and seriousness of the earlier harassment and the similarity and nearness in time to the later harassment. . . . Hirase-Doi, 61 F.3d at 783-84. Mr. Tademy presented evidence that a fellow employee, Harry Price, reported numerous instances of racist graffiti to Union Pacific's management. The messages included ones similar to those Mr. Tademy experienced: No niggers here, Go home, boy, KKK, an N with a circle around it and a slash drawn through it, and a cartoon drawing of a person that, at one time, was labeled nigger. Aplt's App. vol. VI, at 1008, 1010. According to Mr. Price, part of this graffiti remained in the North Yard shanty bathroom for ten or twelve years, and part of it remained for three or four years. The graffiti was removed sometime in 2002. Id. at 1008. Mr. Price reported this graffiti to three different Union Pacific employees he believed were management-level employees, including a superintendent, and in each case they said they would take care of it, but no investigation was ever conducted. Mr. Tademy also urges this court to take into account the fact that Union Pacific received complaints about nooses in service units in Albina, Oregon; Seattle, Washington; Chicago, Illinois; and Los Angeles, California, all within four years of Mr. Tademy's discovery of the noose. However, in conducting our inquiry, we decline to take into account any acts of discrimination occurring outside of the Salt Lake unit. As Union Pacific points out, it is a large company with employees scattered across the western and mid-western United States. We fail to see how the appearance of, for example, nooses in four disparate locations would alert the company of a potential problem in the Salt Lake unit. Thus, we do not consider Union Pacific on notice of a noose problem because those incidents occurred at various locations and Mr. Tademy has not alleged that they are related to the noose at issue. Nevertheless, based on the record before us, we must conclude that there is a triable issue as to whether the recurrence of racist graffiti was the sort of harassment that in the exercise of reasonable care should have been discovered by management-level employees. Adler, 144 F.3d at 673. In reaching this conclusion, we consider the accounts of Mr. Price because they describe harassment that is sufficiently related in similarity and nearness in time to the racial hostilities Mr. Tademy has alleged. Hirase-Doi, 61 F.3d at 783-84. Thus, for the purposes of our analysis below, we assume that Union Pacific was, or at least should have been, on notice that the Salt Lake service unit had a serious problem with bigoted messages appearing in public spaces around the time Mr. Tademy raised his complaints.
The test for the adequacy of an employer's remedial response to racial hostility is whether the remedial and preventative action [is] reasonably calculated to end the harassment. Adler, 144 F.3d at 676 (internal quotation marks omitted). A stoppage of harassment shows effectiveness, which in turn evidences such reasonable calculation. However, this is not the sole factor to be considered. Because there is no strict liability and an employer must only respond reasonably, a response may be so calculated even though the perpetrator might persist. Id. A plaintiff who argues that continuing harassment demonstrates the inadequacy of the employer's response must offer evidence of a nexus between a[n employer's] prior response and later harassment by others. Id. at 678. If the employer's action does not stop the harassment, then this court examines its adequacy in light of the timing of the employee's complaint, the speed of the employer's response, and the gravity of the punishment relative to the alleged harassment. Duncan, 397 F.3d at 1310. We view the record in the light most favorable to the non-moving party. See Kendrick, 220 F.3d at 1225. Here, Mr. Tademy has offered evidence that Union Pacific failed to investigate or discipline any employee as a result of (1) the word nigger written on Mr. Tademy's locker; (2) the words nigger and hang all niggers and jews written in a bathroom; (3) the F  ing Kunte Kinte incident, (4) the Sambo cartoon; and (5) the nigger swimming pool graffiti. We also take into account the evidence offered by Mr. Price-that Union Pacific was on notice of, but failed to take action regarding, a variety of racist graffiti over an extended period of time. Those messages were unequivocally racist. The fact that the words nigger, nigger go home, and hang all niggers and jews appeared, and in some instances remained, in areas accessible to all employees may well reveal more about what is acceptable in the work environment than any EEO manuals, which may or may not be distributed to or read by employees. See Adler, 144 F.3d at 676 (stating that [c]ourts have explained that simply indicating to a perpetrator the existence of a policy against harassment is usually insufficient to constitute an effective response). These statements not only communicated to minority employees that were not welcome in the workplace but also sent a message that overt expressions of racism would not be taken seriously. Both of these signals are antithetical to Title VII and contribute to a hostile work environment. In response to Mr. Tademy's allegations regarding the graffiti, Union Pacific invokes our statement in Duncan that [w]e doubt whether [the defendant employer] ha[d] an obligation to investigate the distribution of anonymous letters because it is very difficult for an employer to identify and punish the perpetrators of anonymous acts. 397 F.3d at 1312. In our view, that statement does not establish as a matter of law that a failure to make any efforts to determine which employees were responsible for multiple incidents of racist graffiti was reasonable. The two anonymous letters at issue in Duncan included an outlandish jeremiad that speculate[d] about a number of far-fetched conspiracies involving high ranking members of the [Denver Police Department]. Id. Here, in contrast, the graffiti was placed throughout the workplace over an extended period of time and, as we have noted, its presence there supports Mr. Tademy's claim that he was subjected to severe harassment. Although there may be difficulties with investigating anonymous acts of harassment, those difficulties at most present factual questions about the reasonableness of Union Pacific's response; they are not sufficient to support a finding that Union Pacific acted reasonably as a matter of law. Further, our precedent suggests that employers have remedies available for graffiti in the workplace. For example, in Baty v. Willamette Indus., Inc., 172 F.3d 1232 (10th Cir.1999), overruled on other grounds by Morgan, 536 U.S. 101, 122 S.Ct. 2061, 153 L.Ed.2d 106, an employer received complaints about graffiti containing inappropriate sexual references to a particular female employee in the men's restroom. In response, the employer collected samples of the graffiti and compared them to handwriting on job applications. Similarly, in Scarberry v. Exxonmobil Oil Corp., 328 F.3d 1255, 1257-58 (10th Cir.2003), the employer's human resources manager (1) personally viewed the graffiti; (2) took pictures of it; (3) authorized the graffiti's immediate removal; (4) began interviewing employees and security guards to determine who could be a suspect; (5) began interviewing employees who had been targeted as suspects; (6) collected writing samples from the suspects' employee records and compared them with the graffiti; (7) reviewed the company's security system surveillance tapes; (8) reviewed trucking logs of outside contractors who were on the premises during the relevant period; (9) attempted to identify a forensic handwriting expert; (10) contacted headquarters seeking additional assistance; and (11) told security to be more aware of potential problems at the plant. In response to a second incident, the employer took similar measures, concluded that it was highly probable that a particular employee was responsible, and terminated him. Id. at 1258. In our view, those measures were reasonably calculated to end the harassment caused by the graffiti. Here, the reasonableness of Union Pacific's response to the graffiti is also undermined by its own response to the noose incident. The noose, like the graffiti, was anonymous, Duncan, 397 F.3d at 1312; no employee signed his name to it or volunteered, without investigation, that he or she was responsible for it. Yet, in that instance, Union Pacific management did not conclude that no action could be taken. Instead, the company began an inquiry, identified the responsible employee, and took disciplinary action. On this record, a reasonable jury could conclude that similar efforts were possible with respect to the graffiti. Importantly, a reasonable jury could also find a nexus between the failure to investigate the graffiti and later acts committed by Mr. White and Mr. Erickson (the slaves e-mail and the noose). See Adler, 144 F.3d at 678. Because Union Pacific made no efforts to identify and discipline those responsible for the various incidents of racist graffiti, those two employees might well have concluded that they could engage in such behavior with minimal consequences (i.e., that their employer would condone[] or tolerate[] these acts). Lockard, 162 F.3d at 1073. See Jackson v. Quanex, 191 F.3d 647, 663-64 (6th Cir.1999) (discussing the fact that an employer was slow to eliminate racially offensive graffiti when it learned of it, and made no effort to discover the perpetrators; noting that, as a result of the employer's failure to respond the graffiti continued throughout the entire period of time that [the plaintiff] worked [for the employer]; and concluding that [t]hese were not actions reasonably calculated to end racially offensive conduct). We therefore conclude that there are genuine issues of fact as to whether an apparent racist graffiti problem, combined with Union Pacific's failure to respond to Mr. Tademy's complaints about the Bleckert incident contributed to the subsequent acts of harassment. Mr. Tademy has presented evidence sufficient to give rise to an inference that Union Pacific failed to discharge its obligation by taking appropriate remedial or preventative action. Adler, 144 F.3d at 676.