Opinion ID: 387364
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: claim for declaratory and injunctive relief

Text: 14 The District Court appeared to find that even Bundy took a casual attitude toward the pattern of unsolicited sexual advances in the agency, Finding of Fact No. 47, App. 17, thereby implying that these advances by themselves did no harm to female employees. We find little or no basis in the record for the District Court's finding or implication, especially since Bundy's testimony that the sexual harassment she endured did her serious emotional harm, App. 40, was essentially unrefuted. In any event, the essential basis for the District Court's refusal to hold that the sexual harassment was in itself a violation of Title VII, Conclusion of Law No. 5, App. 18, was not this factual finding, but the District Court's construction of Title VII. The key provision of Title VII states: 15 It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer 16 (1) to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to (her) compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual's    sex   (.) 17 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a)(1) (1976). The specific provision of Title VII applying to employment with the District of Columbia, as well as to a federal agency as in Barnes v. Costle, supra, states: 18 All personnel actions affecting employees    in those units of the Government of the District of Columbia having positions in the competitive service    shall be made free from any discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. 19 Id. § 2000e-16(a). Despite the difference in language between these two sections, we have held that Title VII places the same restrictions on federal and District of Columbia agencies as it does on private employers, Barnes v. Costle, supra, 561 F.2d at 988, and so we may construe the latter provision in terms of the former. We infer that the District Court in this case did the same, and that it refused Bundy declaratory and injunctive relief because it believed that sexual harassment not leading to loss or denial of tangible employment benefits for the harassed employee fell outside the scope of discrimination with respect to terms, conditions, or privileges of employment. 20 Because Paulette Barnes had had her job terminated after she refused her supervisor's sexual importunings, we were not required in Barnes to construe the phrase terms, conditions, or privileges of employment. Instead, our task of statutory construction in Barnes was to determine whether the disparate treatment Barnes suffered was based on    sex. Id. at 989. We heard arguments there that whatever harm Barnes suffered was not sex discrimination, since Barnes' supervisor terminated her job because she had refused sexual advances, not because she was a woman. We rejected those arguments as disingenuous in the extreme. The supervisor in that case made demands of Barnes that he would not have made of male employees. Id. But for her womanhood    (Barnes') participation in sexual activity would never have been solicited. To say, then, that she was victimized in her employment simply because she declined the invitation is to ignore the asserted fact that she was invited only because she was a woman subordinate to the inviter in the hierarchy of agency personnel. Id. at 990 (emphasis added; footnotes omitted). 7 21 We thus made clear in Barnes that sex discrimination within the meaning of Title VII is not limited to disparate treatment founded solely or categorically on gender. Rather, discrimination is sex discrimination whenever sex is for no legitimate reason a substantial factor in the discrimination. Id. at 990 & n.50, citing Phillips v. Martin Marietta Corp., 400 U.S. 542, 91 S.Ct. 496, 27 L.Ed.2d 613 (1971); see 29 C.F.R. § 1604.4(a) (1979) (so long as sex is a factor in the application of (an employer's decision), such application involves a discrimination based on sex). Other circuits have agreed. Tomkins v. Public Service Electric & Gas Co., 568 F.2d 1044 (3d Cir. 1977); Garber v. Saxon Business Products, Inc., 552 F.2d 1032 (4th Cir. 1977); see Miller v. Bank of America, 600 F.2d 211 (9th Cir. 1979). 22 We thus have no difficulty inferring that Bundy suffered discrimination on the basis of sex. Moreover, applying Barnes, we have no difficulty ascribing the harassment the standard operating procedure to Bundy's employer, the agency. Although Delbert Jackson himself appears not to have used his position as Director to harass Bundy, an employer is liable for discriminatory acts committed by supervisory personnel, Barnes v. Costle, supra, 561 F.2d at 993, and there is obviously no dispute that the men who harassed Bundy were her supervisors. Barnes did suggest that the employer might be relieved of liability if the supervisor committing the harassment did so in contravention of the employer's policy and without the employer's knowledge, and if the employer moved promptly and effectively to rectify the offense. Id.; see Croker v. Boeing Co. (Vertol Div.), 437 F.Supp. 1138, 1194 (E.D. Pa.1977). Here, however, Delbert Jackson and other officials in the agency who had some control over employment and promotion decisions had full notice of harassment committed by agency supervisors and did virtually nothing to stop or even investigate the practice. 8 See id. at 1191. And though there was ample evidence in this case that at least two other women in the agency suffered from this harassment, see note 3 supra, Barnes makes clear that the employer could be held liable even if Bundy were the only victim, since Congress intended Title VII to protect individuals against class-based prejudice. Barnes v. Costle, supra, 561 F.2d at 993. 9 23 We thus readily conclude that Bundy's employer discriminated against her on the basis of sex. What remains is the novel question whether the sexual harassment of the sort Bundy suffered amounted by itself to sex discrimination with respect to the terms, conditions, or privileges of employment. Though no court has as yet so held, we believe that an affirmative answer follows ineluctably from numerous cases finding Title VII violations where an employer created or condoned a substantially discriminatory work environment, regardless of whether the complaining employees lost any tangible job benefits as a result of the discrimination. 24 Bundy's claim on this score is essentially that conditions of employment include the psychological and emotional work environment that the sexually stereotyped insults and demeaning propositions to which she was indisputably subjected and which caused her anxiety and debilitation, App. 40, illegally poisoned that environment. This claim invokes the Title VII principle enunciated by Judge Goldberg in Rogers v. Equal Employment Opportunity Com'n, 454 F.2d 234 (5th Cir. 1971), cert. denied, 406 U.S. 957, 92 S.Ct. 2058, 32 L.Ed.2d 343 (1972). The plaintiff in Rogers, a Hispanic, did not claim that her employer, a firm of opticians, had deprived her of any tangible job benefit. Rather, she claimed that by giving discriminatory service to its Hispanic clients the firm created a discriminatory and offensive work environment for its Hispanic employees. Granting that the express language of Title VII did not mention this situation, Judge Goldberg stated: 25 Congress chose neither to enumerate specific discriminatory practices, nor to elucidate in extenso the parameter of such nefarious activities. Rather, it pursued the path of wisdom by being unconstrictive, knowing that constant change is the order of our day and that the seemingly reasonable practices of the present can easily become the injustices of the morrow. Time was when employment discrimination tended to be viewed as a series of isolated and distinguishable events, manifesting itself, for example, in an employer's practices of hiring, firing, and promoting. But today employment discrimination is a far more complex and pervasive phenomenon, as the nuances and subtleties of discriminatory employment practices are no longer confined to bread and butter issues. As wages and hours of employment take subordinate roles in management-labor relationships, the modern employee makes ever-increasing demands in the nature of intangible fringe benefits. Recognizing the importance of these benefits, we should neither ignore their need for protection, nor blind ourselves to their potential misuse. 26 454 F.2d at 238. The Fifth Circuit then concluded that the employer had indeed violated Title VII, Judge Goldberg explaining that terms, conditions, or privileges of employment 27 is an expansive concept which sweeps within its protective ambit the practice of creating a work environment heavily charged with ethnic or racial discrimination.    One can readily envision working environments so heavily polluted with discrimination as to destroy completely the emotional and psychological stability of minority group workers   . 28 Id.; accord, Carroll v. Talman Federal Savings & Loan Ass'n, 604 F.2d 1028, 103 2-1033 & n.13 (7th Cir. 1979), petition for cert. pending (forcing female bank employees to wear uniforms while allowing males to wear own suits violates Title VII by perpetuating demeaning sexual stereotypes; terms and conditions of employment mean more than tangible compensation and benefits); Cariddi v. Kansas City Chiefs Football Club, Inc., 568 F.2d 87 (8th Cir. 1977) (though employee could only prove isolated incidents, a pattern of offensive ethnic slurs would violate his Title VII rights); Firefighters Institute for Racial Equality v. City of St. Louis, 549 F.2d 506, 514-515 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, 434 U.S. 819, 98 S.Ct. 60, 54 L.Ed.2d 76 (1977) (segregated employee eating clubs condoned though not organized or regulated by employer violate Title VII by creating discriminatory work environment); Gray v. Greyhound Lines, East, 178 U.S.App.D.C. 91, 545 F.2d 169, 176 (D.C. Cir. 1976) (pattern of racial slurs violates Title V II rights to nondiscriminatory environment); United States v. City of Buffalo, 457 F.Supp. 612, 631-635 (W.D. N.Y. 1978) (black employees entitled to work environment free of racial abuse and insult); Compston v. Borden, Inc., 424 F.Supp. 157 (S.D. Ohio 1976) (demeaning religious slurs by supervisor violate Title V II); Steadman v. Hundley, 421 F. Supp. 53, 57 (N.D. Ill. 1976) (racial slurs m ay lead to Title VII violation); cf. Harrington v. Vandalia-Butler Board of Edu c., 585 F.2d 192, 194 n.3 (6th Cir. 1978), cert. denied, 441 U.S. 932, 99 S.Ct. 2053, 60 L.Ed.2d 660 (1979) (giving female physical education teachers inferior locker and shower facilities is illegal discrimination; Title VII reaches actual working conditions, not just equal opportunity for employment); Waters v. Heublein, Inc., 547 F.2d 466 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 433 U.S. 915, 97 S.Ct. 2988, 53 L.Ed.2d 1100 (1977) (white plaintiff has standing to sue employer who discriminates against blacks, since she has statutory right to work environment free of racial prejudice); Swint v. Pullman-Standard, 539 F.2d 77 (5th Cir. 19 76) (discriminatory job assignments violate Title VII even where no discrimination in salary; Title VII claimant need not prove tangible economic harm). 10 29 The relevance of these discriminatory environment cases to sexual harassment is beyond serious dispute. Racial or ethnic discrimination against a company's minority clients may reflect no intent to discriminate directly against the company's minority employees, but in poisoning the atmosphere of employment it violates Title VII. Sexual stereotyping through discriminatory dress requirements may be benign in intent, and may offend women only in a general, atmospheric manner, yet it violates Title VII. Racial slurs, though intentional and directed at individuals, may still be just verbal insults, yet they too may create Title VII liability. How then can sexual harassment, which injects the most demeaning sexual stereotypes into the general work environment and which always represents an intentional assault on an individual's innermost privacy, not be illegal? 30 Moreover, an important principle articulated in Rogers v. Equal Employment Opportunity Com'n, supra, suggests the special importance of allowing women to sue to prevent sexual harassment without having to prove that they resisted the harassment and that their resistance caused them to lose tangible job benefits. Judge Goldberg noted that even indirect discrimination is illegal because it 31 may constitute a subtle scheme designed to create a working environment imbued with discrimination and directed ultimately at minority group employees. As patently discriminatory practices become outlawed, those employers bent on pursuing a general policy declared illegal by Congressional mandate will undoubtedly devise more sophisticated methods to perpetuate discrimination among employees.    32 454 F.2d at 239. Thus, unless we extend the Barnes holding, an employer could sexually harass a female employee with impunity by carefully stopping short of firing the employee or taking any other tangible actions against her in response to her resistance, thereby creating the impression the one received by the District Court in this case that the employer did not take the ritual of harassment and resistance seriously. 33 Indeed, so long as women remain inferiors in the employment hierarchy, they may have little recourse against harassment beyond the legal recourse Bundy seeks in this case. The law may allow a woman to prove that her resistance to the harassment cost her her job or some economic benefit, but this will do her no good if the employer never takes such tangible actions against her. 34 And this, in turn, means that so long as the sexual situation is constructed with enough coerciveness, subtlety, suddenness, or one-sidedness to negate the effectiveness of the woman's refusal, or so long as her refusals are simply ignored while her job is formally undisturbed, she is not considered to have been sexually harassed. 35 C. MacKinnon, Sexual Harassment of Working Women 46-47 (1979). It may even be pointless to require the employee to prove that she resisted the harassment at all. So long as the employer never literally forces sexual relations on the employee, resistance may be a meaningless alternative for her. If the employer demands no response to his verbal or physical gestures other than good-natured tolerance, the woman has no means of communicating her rejection. She neither accepts nor rejects the advances; she simply endures them. She might be able to contrive proof of rejection by objecting to the employer's advances in some very visible and dramatic way, but she would do so only at the risk of making her life on the job even more miserable. Id. at 43-47. It hardly helps that the remote prospect of legal relief under Barnes remains available if she objects so powerfully that she provokes the employer into firing her. 36 The employer can thus implicitly and effectively make the employee's endurance of sexual intimidation a condition of her employment. The woman then faces a cruel trilemma. She can endure the harassment. She can attempt to oppose it, with little hope of success, either legal or practical, but with every prospect of making the job even less tolerable for her. Or she can leave her job, with little hope of legal relief 11 and the likely prospect of another job where she will face harassment anew. 37 Bundy proved that she was the victim of a practice of sexual harassment and a discriminatory work environment permitted by her employer. Her rights under Title VII were therefore violated. We thus reverse the District Court's holding on this issue and remand it to that court so it can fashion appropriate injunctive relief. 12 And on this novel issue, we think it advisable to offer the District Court guidance in framing its decree. 13 38 The Final Guidelines on Sexual Harassment in the Workplace (Guidelines) issued by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on November 10, 1980, 45 Fed.Reg. 74676-74677 (1980) (to be codified at 29 C.F.R. § 1604.11(a)-(f)), offer a useful basis for injunctive relief in this case. Those Guidelines define sexual harassment broadly: 39 Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature constitute sexual harassment when (1) submission to such conduct is made either explicitly or implicitly a term or condition of an individual's employment, (2) submission to or rejection of such conduct by an individual is used as the basis for employment decisions affecting such individual, or (3) such conduct has the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual's work performance or creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive work environment. 40 Guidelines, supra, 45 Fed.Reg. at 74677 (to be codified at 29 C.F.R. § 1604.11(a)). The Guidelines go on to reaffirm that an employer is responsible for discriminatory acts of its agents and supervisory employees with respect to sexual harassment just as with other forms of discrimination, regardless of whether the employer authorized or knew or even should have known of the acts, id. (to be codified at 29 C.F.R. § 1604.11(d)), and also remains responsible for sexual harassment committed by nonsupervisory employees if the employer authorized, knew of, or should have known of such harassment, id. (to be codified at 29 C.F.R. § 1604.11(d)). The general goal of these Guidelines is preventive. An employer may negate liability by taking immediate and appropriate corrective action when it learns of any illegal harassment, id., but the employer should fashion rules within its firm or agency to ensure that such corrective action never becomes necessary, id. (to be codified at 29 C.F.R. § 1604.11(f)). 41 Applying these Guidelines to the present case, we believe that the Director of the agency should be ordered to raise affirmatively the subject of sexual harassment with all his employees and inform all employees that sexual harassment violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Guidelines of the EEOC, the express orders of the Mayor of the District of Columbia, 14 and the policy of the agency itself. The Director should also establish and publicize a scheme whereby harassed employees may complain to the Director immediately and confidentially. The Director should promptly take all necessary steps to investigate and correct any harassment, including warnings and appropriate discipline directed at the offending party, and should generally develop other means of preventing harassment within the agency. 42 Perhaps the most important part of the preventive remedy will be a prompt and effective procedure for hearing, adjudicating, and remedying complaints of sexual harassment within the agency. Fortunately, the District Court need not establish an entire new procedural mechanism for harassment complaints. Under regulations promulgated by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 29 C.F.R. §§ 1613.201-1613.283 (1979), the Department of Corrections, like all other federal and District of Columbia agencies, is required to establish procedures for adjudication of complaints of denial of equal employment opportunity, whether the ground of discrimination is race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. The required procedures guarantee the complainant a prompt and effective investigation, an opportunity for informal adjustment of the discrimination, and, if necessary, a formal evidentiary hearing. Moreover, if the complaint proves meritorious the agency may be required to take disciplinary action against any employee found to have committed discriminatory acts. Id. § 1613.22(c). Finally, the agency must inform any employee denied relief within the agency of his or her right to file a civil action in the District Court. Id. § 1613.282. 43 Since we have held that sexual harassment, even if it does not result in loss of tangible job benefits, is illegal sex discrimination, the District Court may simply order the Director of the agency to ensure that complaints of sexual harassment receive thorough and effective treatment within the formal process the agency has already established to comply with the Civil Service Commission regulations. Finally, we believe the District Court should retain jurisdiction of the case so that it may review the Director's plans for complying with the injunction. 15