Court Opinion

ID: 9634007
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 12:12:04.270285+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:08:46.986035
License: Public Domain

GRUENDER, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
Because I would affirm the district court’s grant of summary judgment to ABMK in all respects, I concur in part and dissent in part. I concur in Parts I and II.A of the Court’s opinion. I also agree with the Court’s determination in Part II.B that under the four-factor test set out in Baker v. Stuart Broadcasting Co., 560 F.2d 389, 392 (8th Cir.1977), there is a material question of fact with respect to whether ABMI and ABMK are an integrated enterprise.3 I also concur in the *804Court’s holding in Part II.C that the district court properly granted summary judgment dismissing Garcia’s, Laureano’s, and Giron’s retaliation, sex discrimination, and quid pro quo sexual harassment claims and Garcia’s hostile work environment claim. No matter what job title the alleged harassers may have claimed, no reasonable factfinder could find that they were in fact supervisors because they had no authority to take tangible employment actions against the victims. See Joens v. John Morrell & Co., 354 F.3d 938, 940 (8th Cir.2004) (noting that the majority of circuits that have addressed the question have found that a supervisor is one with power “to take tangible employment action against the victim, such as the authority to hire, fire, promote, or reassign to significantly different duties”); Noviello v. City of Boston, 398 F.3d 76, 95 (1st Cir.2005) (“[Cjourts must distinguish employees who are supervisors merely as a function of nomenclature from those who are entrusted with actual supervisory powers.” (internal quotation omitted)).
While I agree with the Court that “the plaintiffs’ complaints to their supervisors were insufficient to put ABMK on notice of the harassment,” ante at 21, I respectfully dissent from the Court’s decision to reverse and remand the district court’s dismissal of Laureano’s and Giron’s hostile work environment claims. As the Court notes, “[t]o establish a prima facie case of hostile work environment sexual harassment by non-supervisory co-workers, [Laureano and Giron] must ... establish that ABMK knew or should have known of the harassment and failed to take prompt remedial action.” Ante at 20-21 (citing Meriwether v. Caraustar Packaging Co., 326 F.3d 990, 993 (8th Cir.2003)). I would hold that Laureano and Giron have failed to establish that ABMK had actual or constructive notice of the harassment.
The Court holds that it was error for the district court to disregard the evidence of “nearly one hundred similar complaints during the time plaintiffs were employed,” concluding that ABMK should have known of the “rampant sexual harassment by on-site supervisors.” Ante at 22. The Court does not find that this evidence created a material question of fact with respect to whether ABMK had constructive notice of the harassment, only that the district court erred by disregarding this evidence. However, the Court ignores the fact that Laureano and Giron’s proffered evidence in this regard involved numerous sexual harassment complaints concerning different victims and different employees at different locations. ABMK has approximately 400 locations at which it provides janitorial services in Minnesota, including office buildings throughout Minneapolis and St. Paul. In their opening brief, the appellants state that during the period of harassment at least 85 other employees reported similar treatment by the appellants’ alleged harassers “or other first-line supervisors” and list numerous citations to the record that purportedly support this claim. However, a thorough review of these citations reveals only one instance in which a coworker alleged that she was harassed by Laureano’s or Giron’s alleged harassers, and even that instance does not support their claim that ABMK knew of the harassment. In an affidavit, Marlene Jirón states that she was harassed by Giron’s alleged harasser. However, in that affidavit, Jirón also explicitly states that she did “not report[] *805the supervisor to the manager.” Thus, there is nothing in the record to suggest that ABMK had notice of harassment committed by Laureano’s or Giron’s alleged harassers. Moreover, there is nothing in the record supporting a claim that ABMK had any notice of harassment occurring at the locations where Laureano and Giron worked.
The Court cites no authority for the proposition that an employer may have constructive notice of harassment by employees at one location based on harassment of other victims by different employees at a different location. While we have previously acknowledged that a court may consider evidence of harassment of which the plaintiff was not aware, see Williams v. ConAgra Poultry Co., 378 F.3d 790, 793-94 (8th Cir.2004), the evidence in Williams was admitted in furtherance of the plaintiffs claims that the harassment was severe or pervasive, not to demonstrate that the employer had constructive notice of harassment suffered by one employee based on harassment suffered by a different employee at a different location, id. at 794. Here, the Court endorses Laureano and Giron’s effort to use evidence of harassment at other locations committed by other employees against other victims to establish that ABMK had constructive notice of the harassment they suffered. Such a holding undermines the whole notion of constructive notice. For example, under the Court’s theory, an employer could be held to have constructive notice of sexual harassment in a warehouse in Missouri based on complaints of sexual harassment in its headquarters in Florida. Under this theory, the employer that had notice of harassment at its headquarters “should have anticipated” harassment at its warehouse. See ante at 22.
Because I do not agree that an employer should be held to have constructive notice based on harassment committed by different employees and occurring at different locations, I respectfully dissent on this point. I would find instead that the district court did not err when it refused to consider the proffered evidence of harassment at different locations involving different employees with respect to constructive notice. In the absence of any other evidence that ABMK knew or should have known of the harassment alleged by Laureano and Giron and failed to take prompt remedial action, I would affirm the district court’s grant of summary judgment to ABMK on Laureano’s and Giron’s hostile work environment claim as well.
Accordingly, because I agree with Parts I and II.A of the Court’s opinion, and because I would find that summary judgment was appropriate for Garcia’s, Laureano’s, and Giron’s claims of retaliation, sex discrimination, quid pro quo sexual harassment, and hostile work environment, I would affirm the district court’s grant of summary judgment to ABMK in all respects.

. While I would find that Brown v. Fred’s Inc., 494 F.3d 736, 739 (8th Cir.2007), creates a “strong presumption” against finding that a parent company is the employer of its subsidiary’s employees and a distinct standard for determining integrated enterprise status, I note that when faced with two divergent lines of cases within a circuit, we may choose which line to follow, see Kostelec v. State Farm Fire & Cas. Co., 64 F.3d 1220, 1228 n. 8 (8th Cir.1995). Accordingly, for the purposes of this dissent I will assume that the Court may choose to follow Baker. Nevertheless, I am not convinced by the Court's discussion of Congress's decision to incorporate the four-factor test for United States citizens employed in a foreign country. See ante at 8-10. If Congress had wished to incorporate this test for companies operating within the United States, it could have done so. In fact, we may presume that Congress did not intend this test to apply to companies operating within the *804United States. See BFP v. Resolution Trust Corp., 511 U.S. 531, 537, 114 S.Ct. 1757, 128 L.Ed.2d 556 (1994) ("[I]t is generally presumed that Congress acts intentionally and purposely when it includes particular language in one section of a statute but omits it in another.”).