Court Opinion

ID: 9495411
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:02:14.43147+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:36.959107
License: Public Domain

GRABER, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I concur in Judge W. Fletcher’s opinion because the facts here are materially indistinguishable from the facts in Oncale v. *1070Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc., 523 U.S. 75, 118 S.Ct. 998, 140 L.Ed.2d 201 (1998). If summary judgment in the employer’s favor was inappropriate in that case, it is equally so in this one.
I write separately to note that I agree with Judge Hug’s dissent on two issues that the majority opinion does not reach: (1) Title VII does not protect employees from discrimination because of sexual orientation and (2) Rene did not assert a theory of “sexual stereotyping.”
FISHER, Circuit Judge,
Concurring.
I concur in Judge Fletcher’s opinion. Summary judgment is improperly granted where, as in this case, the “inference of discrimination” because of sex is “easy to draw.” Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Servs., Inc., 523 U.S. 75, 80, 118 S.Ct. 998, 140 L.Ed.2d 201 (1998). The repeated physical attacks targeted at body parts clearly linked to Rene’s gender constituted overwhelming evidence from which a jury could infer that the attacks were based, at least in part, on Rene’s sex. See 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2; see also, e.g., Steiner v. Showboat Operating Co., 25 F.3d 1459, 1463-64 (9th Cir.1994) (holding that when abuse directed at women “center[s] on the fact that they [are] females,” a jury may infer discrimination based on gender); Doe v. City of Belleville, 119 F.3d 563, 580 (7th Cir.1997) (“Frankly, we find it hard to think of a situation in which someone intentionally grabs another’s testicles for reasons entirely unrelated to that person’s gender.”), vacated and remanded by 523 U.S. 1001, 118 S.Ct. 1183, 140 L.Ed.2d 313 (1998); Quick v. Donaldson Co., 90 F.3d 1372, 1378 (8th Cir.1996) (holding that “bagging” of testicles of men by other men in predominantly male workforce was “[e]vidence that members of one sex were the primary targets” of harassment “sufficient to show that the conduct was gender based for purposes of summary judgment”). The alleged abuse Rene suffered was also sufficiently hostile and abusive to distinguish it from “simple teasing and roughhousing among members of the same sex.” Oncale, 523 U.S. at 82, 118 S.Ct. 998.
I also agree with Judge Pregerson that the many examples in which Rene was allegedly physically touched and verbally mocked by his harassers as being “like a woman” constituted ample evidence from which a jury could conclude that the harassment Rene endured was based on gender stereotyping. See Nichols v. Azte-ca Rest. Enter., Inc., 256 F.3d 864, 874-75 (9th Cir.2001).