Court Opinion

ID: 9492548
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:43:51.972393+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:21.768306
License: Public Domain

DIANA GRIBBON MOTZ,
dissenting:
I join Judge Murnaghan’s compelling dissent. It persuasively demonstrates why the judgment of the district court should be reversed. I write separately to address a single point. Although the subject is distasteful, I feel compelled to voice my strong objection to an argument vigorously pressed by VUU.
The evidence of Chief Wells’ animus toward women went unrebutted at trial, but the district court excluded what I believe was the most powerful evidence of this animus. Specifically, the district court excluded testimony that Chief Wells commented that he “bet” a woman “ha[d] good pussy.” The majority holds exclusion of this evidence was harmless, a conclusion with which I do not agree but which I understand.
VUU, however, pressed a very different contention. Although at oral argument (but not in its appellate brief) the university fleetingly asserted harmlessness, its principal contention was that exclusion of this statement was proper because the statement was purportedly irrelevant. The remark was irrelevant, VUU maintained, because Chief Wells made it “to another male employee without a female being in the presence.” The university explained that “this is [a] kind of man talk situation. When men get together and talk they say certain things. Certainly the plaintiff had no way of knowing this comment was ever made.”
If a supervisor’s own words reflect the illegal bias he is accused of harboring, those words generally constitute strong, direct evidence of that animus, admissible in an employment discrimination action brought against him. See Mullen v. Princess Anne Volunteer Fire Co. 853 F.2d 1130, 1133 (4th Cir.1988). Such evidence does not become irrelevant just because the supervisor did not make the offensive remarks in front of those he is accused of victimizing, or because the plaintiff did not know of the remarks. See e.g. Hurley v. Atlantic City Police Dept., 174 F.3d 95, 108-111 (3d Cir.1999) (finding admissible in sex-discrimination suit testimony “about ‘locker-room conversations between men outside the presence of women’ ” even though plaintiff had no knowledge of the conversations until after she filed suit). Rather, a trial court abuses its discretion when it excludes evidence demonstrating racial or gender animus solely because the statements were made between members of the same race or gender. See, e.g., Talley v. Bravo Pitino Restaurant, 61 F.3d 1241, 1249 (6th Cir.1995) (exclusion of evidence of racial slurs made, in private by white supervisors to white employees is abuse of discretion requiring reversal); Miles v. M.N.C. Corp., 750 F.2d 867, 873 (11th Cir.1985) (same).
Racial slurs like those at issue in Talley and Miles and sexist denigration like that at issue here and in Hurley are profoundly offensive to most of us. But a supervisor’s use of such language is admissible in an employment discrimination action not because the language is so offensive but because of what it may suggest to the factfinder about the defendant’s employment decisions. As we explained in Mullen:
The use of racially offensive language by the decision maker is relevant as to whether racial animus was behind [his decision] ... and was proper evidence for the jury to consider.... Use of racial aspersions obviously provides an indication that the speaker might be more likely to take race into account in making a hiring ... decision.
*252853 F.2d at 1133. Sexually offensive language is no different. See e.g. Kolstad v. American Dental Ass’n, — U.S. —, 119 S.Ct. 2118, 2121, 144 L.Ed.2d 494 (1999) (finding admissible testimony regarding supervisor’s sexually offensive jokes at staff meetings and references to several women as “bitches” and “battleaxes” as evidence of his bias in sex discrimination case).
Finally, contrary to VUU’s suggestion, the demeaning, lewd remark assertedly made by Chief Wells is not “like” the age-related comments we have previously considered. No great mental gymnastics are necessary to understand that supervisors’ statements that an employer needs to “attract newer, younger people” and “young blood,” see EEOC v. Clay Printing Co., 955 F.2d 936, 942 (4th Cir.1992), or that “there comes a time when we have to make way for younger people,” see Birkbeck v. Marvel Lighting Corp., 30 F.3d 507, 511-12 (4th Cir.1994), are simply not the same .as remarking on a woman’s “good pussy.” Indeed, as Chief Judge Wilkinson explained in Birkbeck itself, “statements about age may well not carry the same animus as those about race or gender,” because “[ujnlike race or gender differences, age does not create a true we/they situation' — barring unfortunate events, every one will enter the protected age group at some point in their lives.” Id. at 512. The remark at issue here differs not just in degree but also in kind from those complained of in our age discrimination cases.
Perhaps appellants’ counsel best explained the fundamental distinction:
It wouldn’t surprise any of us if one of us went out, slapped somebody on the back and said you’re too damn old to play this game of golf anymore. We’re all aging. One thing that would shock us is if anybody on the bench or any one in this courtroom turned around and said about a woman, I think she’s got good pussy. You don’t kid around like that. I mean, we know that. And this stray, isolated comment of you’re too damn old for this job is a decision by the Fourth Circuit that fits with human experience. Saying about a woman, I think that she’s got good pussy is not a joke, it’s something that says that you’re treating this person as a sex object, you’re not treating her as an equal in the work force. It’s not a stray comment, or isolated comment, it goes directly to the issue of how you perceive women in the work force .... it’s a big, wide viewfinder into the soul of the individual who is making it, and it demonstrates that he has a tremendous animus towards women.
I agree and am deeply disappointed that a respected institution of higher learning would suggest otherwise.