Court Opinion

ID: 9493039
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:56:11.793509+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:36.677605
License: Public Domain

TERENCE T. EVANS, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
As Judge Manion correctly points out, our cases indicate that the equal opportunity harasser may often not be discriminating against either sex and, as we know, discrimination is the essence of Title VII. We also have indicated that it might be possible for a plaintiff to show an exception: that the equal opportunity harasser engaged in such sex specific and derogatory behavior as to reveal an “antipathy to persons of the plaintiffs gender,” thus al-. lowing for the possibility that a plaintiff could prove that an equal opportunity harasser was not harassing so equally after all and was, in fact, discriminating against one sex or the other. See Shepherd v. Slater Steels Corp., 168 F.3d 998, 1008 (7th Cir.1999). I write separately only to note that the recognition of that possibility eliminates what otherwise seems to be a troubling clash with Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc., 523 U.S. 75, 118 S.Ct. 998, 140 L.Ed.2d 201 (1998). The workplace in Oncale had eight employees, all male. Nevertheless, the court concluded that it would be possible to find harassment — that it would be possible, therefore, to find discrimination. If “discrimination” is possible in a single-sex workplace, it might also be possible in some circumstances in which we find an equal opportunity harasser. Because this case comes to us on á complaint full of facts which reveal Uhrieh to be a true equal opportunity harasser, I join the opinion.