Court Opinion

ID: 9476809
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:05:59.050989+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:31.244317
License: Public Domain

HILL, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part; and dissenting in part:
While I concur in the decision to remand this case to the district court, I respectfully dissent from a portion of this opinion.
I concur with those parts of the opinion addressed to sexual discrimination which results in tangible detriment to the plaintiff. Until the Supreme Court decides otherwise I will concur with the generally accepted notion that employers are liable in such situations for the actions of supervisors, even when such actions are unknown to them. See e.g., Henson v. City of Dundee, 682 F.2d 897, 909 (11th Cir.1982). See also, Meritor Savings Bank, FBS v. Vinson, 477 U.S. 57,-, 106 S.Ct. 2399, 2408, 91 L.Ed.2d 49 (1986) (noting that the EEOC had described this trend in its brief as amicus curiae, but refusing to “issue a definitive rule on employer liability”). Given this standard for liability, the district court should not have granted summary judgment in those portions of the case directed to rectifying a tangible detriment to plaintiff Sparks.
At the same time, I dissent from that part of the majority opinion which deals with workplace environment discrimination. Vinson dismissed two extreme standards proposed for evaluating work environment discrimination cases: courts could neither insulate those employers who had no notice of the situation, nor hold them automatically liable. Vinson, 477 U.S. at -, 106 S.Ct. at 2408. It is because I fear that today’s decision dips into the second of the two extremes that I dissent from a part of it.1
Workplace environment discrimination deserves a special standard for two reasons. First, as the defendant in Vinson argued: “in a hostile environment case the employer often will have no reason to know about, or opportunity to cure, the alleged wrongdoing.” Vinson, 477 U.S. at-, 106 S.Ct. at 2407. By definition employers should have more reason to know of biases displayed in tangible ways than of biases woven into the environment.
Likewise, the standard the court chooses must recognize that racial and gender discrimination differ. In both instances we find patently offensive types of conduct which cannot be justified and which the law demands be rectified. And yet in cases of gender discrimination we find a second and more subtle strain of conduct which may or may not be offensive given the relationship between the parties at the given time. For example, to a given individual, the gender-based compliment may be acceptable when placed in the context of a relationship between the parties; the same statement may be offensive when that relationship does not exist or has soured. The law stands ready to protect workers against sexually harassing behavior, but it need not and ought not intervene when neither party is offended by the actions. Thus, the standard chosen by the court must be able to measure the behavior within the contours of the situation as it existed at the time of the allegedly discriminatory behavior.
I would propose the following two-step test for analyzing hostile environment situations. First, it must be determined whether or not the allegedly discriminatory behavior was ambiguously or patently offensive. Where the conduct was patently offensive and the offending individual was plaintiff’s supervisor, the inquiry may end: with or without notification of the wrong, the employer may be held liable.
However, where it is found that the supervisor’s behavior was ambiguous, i.e., less than overtly offensive, a second find*1567ing must be made as to whether the plaintiff, by some objective action at the time of the allegedly offensive conduct displayed objection to the conduct of the supervisor. These expressions of dissatisfaction may not always be through formal channels of protest within the employer’s structure (although such methods would be the best display of the fact that ambiguous conduct was offensive to the employer), and thus while this test will often provide notice to the employer, it will not guarantee such notice. However, the objective demonstration of displeasure will clarify and define the otherwise ambiguous actions of the supervisor, and will prevent any reinterpretation of the situation via hindsight.
I would remand the case for a trial and determinations according to the standards set forth in this concurring and dissenting opinion.

. The majority opinion suggests that because plaintiff claims both work environment and quid pro quo violations of Title VII, this court need not address itself to the topic of a standard for "hostile environment" litigation. I disagree. Because plaintiff asserts two types of discrimination does not mean we measure both claims by the laxer standard; each claim must be examined according to the standard appropriate to that contention. Thus, I find that the majority opinion adopts, without analysis, a sweeping and controversial position on hostile environment discrimination.