Opinion ID: 787947
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Common Exposure of Male and Female Employees to Sexually Offensive Comments and Graffiti

Text: 42 Title VII prohibits  discriminat[ion] ... because of ... sex. Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Servs., Inc., 523 U.S. 75, 79-80, 118 S.Ct. 998, 140 L.Ed.2d 201 (1998) (emphasis in original). Thus, a work environment which is equally harsh for both men and women cannot support a claim for sex discrimination. Brennan v. Metropolitan Opera Ass'n, 192 F.3d 310, 318 (2d Cir.1999); accord Brown v. Henderson, 257 F.3d at 253. The mere fact that men and women are both exposed to the same offensive circumstances on the job site, however, does not mean that, as a matter of law, their work conditions are necessarily equally harsh. The objective hostility of a work environment depends on the totality of the circumstances. See Harris v. Forklift Sys., Inc., 510 U.S. 17, 23, 114 S.Ct. 367, 126 L.Ed.2d 295 (1993); Terry v. Ashcroft, 336 F.3d at 148. Further, the perspective from which the evidence must be assessed is that of a reasonable person in the plaintiff's position, considering all the circumstances [including] the social context in which particular behavior occurs and is experienced by its target. Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Servs., Inc., 523 U.S. at 81 (internal quotation marks omitted). 43 There is some ambiguity in our case law as to whether, in a case such as this, a reasonable person in the plaintiff's position must be a woman or a person drawn from the public at large. Compare Torres v. Pisano, 116 F.3d 625, 632 & n. 6 (2d Cir.1997) (assessing challenged conduct from perspective of a reasonable woman), with Richardson v. N.Y. State Dep't of Corr. Serv., 180 F.3d at 436 n. 3 (rejecting view that reasonable person is limited to members of the plaintiff's protected class). 12 In fact, we need not choose between these two options because we conclude that the evidence in this case, viewed in the light most favorable to Petrosino, would permit a jury to conclude that a reasonable person, regardless of gender, would consider the sexually offensive comments and graffiti here at issue more offensive to women than to men and, therefore, discriminatory based on sex. 44 The comments and graphics that permeated Petrosino's work environment may have sexually ridiculed both men and women, but there is an important, though not surprising, distinction. The conduct at issue sexually ridiculed some men, but it also frequently touted the sexual exploits of others. In short, the insults were directed at certain men, not men as a group. By contrast, the depiction of women in the offensive jokes and graphics was uniformly sexually demeaning and communicated the message that women as a group were available for sexual exploitation by men. Such workplace disparagement of women, repeated day after day over the course of several years without supervisory intervention, stands as a serious impediment to any woman's efforts to deal professionally with her male colleagues. 45 The fact that much of this offensive material was not directed specifically at Petrosino — indeed, her male co-workers would likely have traded sexual insults every morning and defaced terminal boxes with sexual graffiti regardless of Petrosino's presence in the I & R department — does not, as a matter of law, preclude a jury from finding that the conduct subjected Petrosino to a hostile work environment based on her sex. Indeed, the Fourth Circuit, sitting en banc, recently reached this same conclusion in a case involving a work environment strikingly similar to that alleged by Petrosino: an all-male production shop (except for the female plaintiff) suffused with sex-laden and sexist talk and conduct. Ocheltree v. Scollon Prods., Inc., 335 F.3d 325, 332 (4th Cir.2003) ( en banc ), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 124 S.Ct. 1406, 158 L.Ed.2d 77 and ___ U.S. ___, 124 S.Ct. 1411, 158 L.Ed.2d 77 (2004). The employer contended that the offensive conduct could not be deemed discriminatory based on sex because it could have been heard [or seen] by anyone present in the shop and was equally offensive to some of the men. Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). The court disagreed, concluding that a jury could find [m]uch of the conduct ... particularly offensive to women and ... intended to provoke [plaintiff's] reaction as a woman. Id. Judge Michael, the author of the en banc decision, had convincingly made this same point in his earlier panel dissent by employing a powerful hypothetical: 46 Suppose, for example, that an African-American plaintiff brings a race discrimination claim alleging a hostile work environment due to his coworkers' daily use of the meanest racial slur against African-Americans. Suppose further that the workplace had previously been all white and that the pattern of racial slurs was the same both before and after the plaintiff's arrival. The majority's reasoning suggests that if the employer could show that none of the racial slurs were directed at the plaintiff and that he would have been exposed to exactly the same language if he had been white, the harassment in this example could not be because of race. Yet I find it difficult to believe that any court would fail to find race-based harassment in these facts. If the right to be free from a racially hostile work environment means anything at all, surely it includes the right to be free from a workplace permeated by racial slurs. 47 Ocheltree v. Scollon Prods., Inc., 308 F.3d 351, 376 (4th Cir.2002) (Michael, J., dissenting in part and concurring in the judgment in part), rev'd en banc, 335 F.3d 325. We note that this analysis parallels that of Judge Newman who, writing separately in Brennan v. Metropolitan Opera Association, Inc., observed that [d]isplays of photos of Blacks being lynched or of nude women in sexually provocative poses would not be insulated from Title VII claims simply because the photos were observable by all office employees, White and Black, male and female. 192 F.3d at 320 (Newman, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). The majority in Brennan found it unnecessary to reach this common-exposure issue to resolve that particular case, see id. at 319, but we now adopt Judge Newman's reasoning and that of the Fourth Circuit in rejecting Bell Atlantic's argument that the common exposure of male and female workers to sexually offensive material necessarily precludes a woman from relying on such evidence to establish a hostile work environment based on sex. See also Robinson v. Jacksonville Shipyards, Inc., 760 F.Supp. 1486, 1522-23 (M.D.Fla.1991) (holding that sexually provocative pictures of nude and partially nude women, which were put up before any female employees joined the workplace, had a disproportionately demeaning impact on female employees and, as such, convey[ed] the message that [women] do not belong). 48 In sum, although all Bell Atlantic employees at the Edgewater Garage were routinely exposed to sexually offensive language and graphics, we conclude that a reasonable jury could find this conduct more demeaning of women than men and, therefore, the evidence should not have been excluded from an assessment of the totality of circumstances in considering Bell Atlantic's motion for summary judgment. 49