Court Opinion

ID: 9786228
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 23:51:23.240924+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:36:42.965111
License: Public Domain

FABE, Justice,
with whom CARPENETI, Justice, joins, dissenting.
I disagree with the court’s conclusions that Mahan has failed to raise a genuine issue of material fact on her claim of wrongful termination and that her hostile work environment claim is time-barred. As the court correctly notes, all inferences must be drawn in favor of Mahan, as the non-moving party.1 Yet the court’s decision credits Arctic’s version of the facts and its argument that Mahan’s termination stemmed from her failure to “perform her work because she continually broke out in a rash when she handled laundry.”2 If Mahan’s deposition testimony and her responses to interrogatories are viewed in the light most favorable to her, one must conclude that she has raised a genuine issue of material fact on the question whether her termination was retaliatory. Viewed in the light most favorable to Mahan, the evidence suggests that her supervisors assigned her tasks in the laundry room — with the knowledge that these were outside her normal duties and that she was allergic to laundry soap — in order to punish her, and that this retaliatory conduct led to her termination. Furthermore, Mahan has made a convincing argument that her otherwise untimely hostile environment claim has been revived by her termination under the continuing violations doctrine. I would therefore reverse the superior court’s grant of summary judgment and permit Mahan to proceed on both her wrongful termination and hostile environment claims.
I. The Evidence Presented by Mahan Raises a Genuine Issue of Material Fact.
Mahan’s argument is that both Harris and Gobaleza sexually harassed her while she was at Badami. According to Mahan’s responses to interrogatories, Gobaleza would come into the restroom when Mahan was cleaning and use the urinal in front of her. Both Gobaleza and Harris came into her room at night “to the point where [she] had *664to prop a chair against the door, because [she] wasn’t getting enough rest at night.” Each man asked Mahan to have sex with him and when Mahan’s supervisor, Doug Schneider, observed Gobaleza’s conduct, he said “that’s considered sexual harassment” and told Gobaleza to leave Mahan alone. Schneider told Mahan she was a good employee, “the best one they had.”
When Mahan was rehired to work for Arctic at the Alpine camp, she claims that Go-baleza continued the harassment and “rubbed his hand down by [her] bra strap, when he went to give a hug.” Mahan also believed that at Alpine, Harris evidenced residual resentment of her action in reporting him for the sexual harassment at Badami. According to Mahan’s deposition testimony, submitted in support of her opposition to the motion for summary judgment, when Harris arrived at Alpine, he “piled work on [Ma-han’s] shoulders every time, extra stuff, that the other housekeepers didn’t have to do.”
Mahan also testified that at Alpine, she “wasn’t assigned to do laundry; [she] was assigned to do the bedrooms and the bathrooms and stuff.” She insisted that she “was supposed to make beds, do bathrooms, and only the laundry that was in the bedrooms.... Not work ... in the laundry room.” She maintained: “I did the duties of [the] position I was hired for. I was not hired to work in the laundry room.” She claims that she “wasn’t treated like the other housekeepers,” and was given “a tremendous amount” of extra work by Harris. She also claims that Harris “was [at Alpine] the day [she] was fired from [her] job up there.”
Thus, the court’s assertion that there are “facially legitimate, non-retaliatory reasons for her termination” because the rash on Mahan’s arms “precluded her from doing the work she had been told to do in the laundry” 3 does not give Mahan the benefit of her testimony that she was not assigned to work in the laundry and that she was being given inappropriate duties by Harris due to her protected activity of resisting his sexual advances. Moreover, although Arctic offered evidence that it fired Mahan due to her inability to perform laundry duties, Mahan’s evidence that she was not hired to do laundry and that she was given extra duties as retaliation for her earlier claims of harassment were “more than ‘unsupported assumptions and speculation.’ ” 4
Finally, although the court concludes that there is no strong chronological connection between Mahan’s firing in March 2000 and the protected conduct in 1999 of resisting the sexual advances of Gobaleza and Harris at Badami, Mahan stated that sexual harassment occurred at Alpine as well as Badami. In her answers to interrogatories, she stated that “Mr. Harris asked Ms. Mahan to have sex with him at Alpine and Badami on repeated occasions during her tenure.” (Emphasis added.) She also responded that Harris “made the following comment to me at Alpine[:] “You sure have a cute ass. I wish I could have a piece of that.’ ” She claimed that Gobaleza inappropriately rubbed his hand down her bra strap when he gave her a hug at Alpine. Her claim of sexual harassment at Alpine thus establishes a chronological connection between her firing and the protected conduct.
II. This Case Is Distinguishable from French v. Jadon, Inc.
The court relies on French v. Jadon, Inc.5 for the proposition that Mahan must offer more than “her own subjective impressions” to establish a link between the alleged sexual harassment and her subsequent firing. But Mahan’s case is distinguishable from French because, unlike the plaintiff in French, Ma-han points to specific instances of sexual advances at both camps, and she asserts that one of her alleged harassers was among those who assigned her extra work at Alpine.6 As noted above, Mahan alleges in her *665affidavit that Gobaleza and Harris made sexual advances toward her at both camps, that Harris assigned her “a tremendous amount” of extra work at Alpine, and that Harris “was [at Alpine] the day [she] was fired from [her] job up there.” Whether this evidence would ultimately persuade a jury is unclear, but it certainly amounts to more than just Mahan’s own subjective impressions.
III. The High Evidentiary Threshold that the Court Applies Here Is Inconsistent with Recent Case Law.
Our many decisions on the standard for summary judgment prevent us from weighing the evidence relied on by a non-moving party in opposition to summary judgment.7 Thus, our role at this stage is not to decide whether Mahan has a strong case for retaliatory discharge; it is merely to decide if she has raised a genuine issue of material fact. As we have held repeatedly, “the evidentiary threshold necessary to preclude an entry of summary judgment is low.”8
Two recent decisions, neither of which the court attempts to distinguish, indicate just how low. In Cikan v. ARCO Alaska, Inc., this court reversed a superior court’s grant of summary judgment to the defendant in a slip-and-fall action brought eight and a half years after the alleged injury.9 The court held that there was a genuine issue of material fact as to whether the plaintiff had been rendered incompetent by the accident, thereby tolling the statute of limitations.10 But the evidence of Cikan’s mental incompetence during the two-year statute of limitations11 was far less substantial than Mahan’s evidence in the present case. Cikan’s medical expert “did not state that [she] was mentally incompetent or incapable of understanding her legal rights from the date of injury ... until the running of the statute [two years later]”;12 the testimony of lay witnesses relied upon by the court focused on Cikan’s incompetency after the expiration of the statute of limitations (rather than during the time that she should have been filing a lawsuit); 13 and one of these witnesses testified that Cikan “appeared to have her life together” six months after the accident.14 Nevertheless, the court held that the evidence raised a genuine issue of material fact.
And in Meyer v. State, Department of Revenue, Child Support Enforcement Division ex rel. N.G.T.,15 the court held that a putative father’s sworn denial that he engaged in sexual intercourse with the child’s mother at the time of conception was sufficient to preclude the entry of summary judgment in á child support action, even though the record included a genetic test indicating a 99.98% probability that he was the father.16 The sworn denial, which was the only evidence presented against paternity, was not even unequivocal: Meyer admitted that he was “unable to recall the precise dates, times of day, locations and circumstances surrounding each [sexual] contact that [he] ... had with [the child’s mother].”17 The Meyer court recognized “the significant statistical odds *666suggesting Meyer’s paternity,” but held that “Meyer’s denial is sufficient to create a genuine factual issue despite the scientific evidence.”, Given the low threshold necessary to preclude entry of summary judgment set by this court in Cikan and Meyer, Mahan’s stronger evidentiary showing is certainly sufficient to defeat Arctic Catering’s motion for summary judgment.
IV. Departing from Our Prior Cases To Set a Higher Threshold Is Likely To Discourage Meritorious Discrimination Claims.
By failing to apply consistently our summary judgment standard, the court not only creates a conflict with existing case law, but also sets a precedent that could deter meritorious claims in the future. Discrimination cases, including claims of harassment and wrongful termination, “often turn on subtle questions of credibility and intent that only a factfinder faced with a live witness should decide.”18 The evidence in these cases, which may consist primarily of the testimony of the alleged victim and the alleged perpetrator, is likely to contain conflicting claims, and is likely to be susceptible to different interpretations, depending on which inferences the factfinder draws. For this reason, discrimination claims — including claims that might prevail if allowed to proceed — are particularly vulnerable to summary judgment if courts improperly weigh the credibility of evidence, fail to draw reasonable inferences in favor of the non-moving party, or decide outright the ultimate questions of fact. As several scholars have noted, this makes it significantly more difficult for victims of discrimination to seek redress, even when the law grants them a cause of action.19 Thus, by deterring meritorious discrimination claims, the court’s departure from precedent is likely to have pernicious effects that go far beyond this particular case.
Y. Mahan’s Hostile Environment Claim Should Be Permitted To Proceed.
Because Mahan has brought forth sufficient evidence to prevent summary judgment on her claim of retaliatory discharge, she should also be permitted to proceed with her hostile environment claim. We have held that “certain patterns of discriminatory acts against the same employee can preserve a claim as timely that might otherwise be barred by the statute of limitations.”20 As the court correctly notes, a plaintiff seeking to preserve otherwise-barred claims “must first demonstrate that some discriminatory act occurred within the limitations period [and] ... must then show that the timely filed claim — based upon this act within the limitation period — is closely related to the otherwise time-barred claims.”21 To determine whether the claims are sufficiently related, we look to “three primary characteristics of the violations: subject matter, temporal proximity, and permanence,”22 with permanence being the most important of the three.23 A “ ‘permanent’ violation triggers a reasonable person’s awareness of *667the alleged discrimination and the need to assert [his or] her rights.”24
Federal case law, although not entirely clear on this point, does not appear to preclude a claim of retaliatory termination from reviving a hostile environment claim.25 Because Mahan does allege a “hostile environment,” the court should apply the three factors for determining whether the continuing violations doctrine revives her sexual harassment claims.26 If Mahan was given work that she was physically unable to do in retaliation for her complaints about sexual harassment, as the evidence suggests, her termination for inability to do that work is clearly related to the previous incidents of sexual harassment. Similarly, given the evidence that sexual harassment occurred at the second camp as well as the first, which implies that the alleged harassment happened within days of her termination, the harassment and termination were proximate in time. Finally, her termination was permanent, in that it would “trigger! ] a reasonable person’s awareness of the alleged discrimination and [of] the need to assert [his or] her rights.”27 I therefore believe that, based on the evidence that Mahan has presented, she should be permitted to proceed with her hostile environment claim as well as her wrongful termination claim.
YI. Conclusion
In sum, Mahan has unequivocally alleged harassment and wrongful retaliation, and has presented evidence that easily surmounts the low threshold required to withstand a motion for summary judgment. Affirming the grant of summary judgment in this case is a departure from our recent precedents. And the court’s decision today is likely to deter meritorious civil rights actions in the future. Furthermore, because Mahan has made a showing of a discriminatory act within the statute of limitations that is closely related to the acts underlying her hostile environment claim, she should be permitted to proceed with her hostile environment claim as well. I therefore respectfully dissent.

. See K & K Recycling, Inc. v. Alaska Gold Co., 80 P.3d 702, 711 (Alaska 2003); R.E. v. State, 878 P.2d 1341, 1345 (Alaska 1994).

. 133 P.3d at 660.

. 133 P.3d at 661.

. 133 P.3d at 661.

. 911 P.2d 20 (Alaska 1996).

.See id. at 27, 29 & n. 16 (noting that plaintiff "produced no evidence of any statement or action reasonably permitting an inference that her employment was in fact conditioned on dating her supervisor’s brother” to support her quid pro quo harassment claim and observing that plain*665tiff could not point to any specific events to support her hostile work environment claim).

. See Cabana v. Kenai Peninsula Borough, 50 P.3d 798, 801 (Alaska 2002) (-“The court does not weigh the evidence or witness credibility on summary judgment."); Alakayak v. British Columbia Packers, Ltd., 48 P.3d 432, 449 (Alaska 2002) (same); Moffatt v. Brown, 751 P.2d 939, 944 (Alaska 1988) (rejecting summary judgment standard for defamation used by federal courts because it incorporated a substantive evidentiary standard, "inevitably implicating] a weighing of the evidence”) (internal citations omitted).

. Hammond v. State, Dep't of Transp. & Pub. Facilities, 107 P.3d 871, 881 (Alaska 2005) (quoting John's Heating Serv. v. Lamb, 46 P.3d 1024, 1032 (Alaska 2002)).

. Cikan v. ARCO Alaska, Inc., 125 P.3d 335 (Alaska 2005).

. Id.

. Id. at 658 n. 8 (citing AS 09.10.070 (providing that lawsuits based on statutory causes of action must be brought within two years)).

. Id. at 663 (Fabe, J., dissenting).

. Id.

. Id.

. 994 P.2d 365 (Alaska 1999).

. Id. at 368.

. Id. at 369 (Fabe, J., dissenting).

. Ann C. McGinley, Credulous Courts and the Tortured Trilogy: The Improper Use of Summary Judgment in Title VII and ADEA Cases, 34 B.C. L.Rev. 203, 208 (1993).

. See, e.g., M. Isabel Medina, A Matter of Fact: Hostile Environments and Summary Judgments, 8 S. Cal. Rev. L. & Women's Stud. 311, 357-71 (1999) (arguing that the practice of deciding certain factual questions, such as whether the plaintiff experienced a hostile work environment, at the summary judgment stage makes it unnecessarily difficult for plaintiffs to bring sexual harassment claims); Ann C. McGinley, supra note 18, at 241-42 (noting that "many courts approaching a summary judgment motion in a civil rights case ... require a plaintiff to prove that [he or] she was discriminated against,” which effectively "shift[s] the burden of proof on a motion for summary judgment from the moving party to the plaintiff,” and “require[s] the plaintiff to meet the ultimate burden of proof at the summary judgment stage”); see also Jana E. Cuellar, The Age Discrimination in Employment Act: Handling the Element of Intent in Summary Judgment Motions, 38 Emory L.J. 523, 532-37 (1989) (noting similar problems in the context of age discrimination actions).

. Sengupta v. Univ. of Alaska, 21 P.3d 1240, 1249 (Alaska 2001); see also Reich v. Cominco Alaska, Inc., 56 P.3d 18, 26 (Alaska 2002).

. Sengupta, 21 P.3d at 1249; 133 P.3d at 659-660.

. Sengupta, 21 P.3d at 1249.

. Id.

. Id.

. The United States Supreme Court has held that certain discriminatory acts, including "termination, failure to promote, denial of transfer, or refusal to hire” are "[discrete acts,” and that an untimely claim for a discrete act cannot be revived through the doctrine of continuing violations. See Nat’l R.R. Passenger Corp. v. Morgan, 536 U.S. 101, 114-15, 122 S.Ct. 2061, 153 L.Ed.2d 106 (2002) (holding that discrete discriminatory acts are not actionable under Title VII if the statute of limitations for these acts has expired, even if they are related to other acts that are the subject of a timely claim). But Morgan did not hold that other claims cannot be revived by a discrete discriminatory act, and Morgan did conclude that the continuing violations doctrine applies to hostile environment claims. See id. at 115-16, 122 S.Ct. 2061. To the extent that Ma-han alleges a series of incidents that, taken together, create a hostile work environment, the assertion that the discrete act of her termination revived the original claim does not appear to be inconsistent with the holding of Morgan.
Furthermore, at least one state court has declined to adopt the reasoning of Morgan even as it applies to reviving discrete acts. See Yanowitz v. L’Oreal USA, Inc., 36 Cal.4th 1028, 32 Cal.Rptr.3d 436, 116 P.3d 1123, 1141-42 (2005) (holding that the continuing violations doctrine can revive acts that are part of a "retaliatory course of conduct,” even if such acts could not be revived under federal law).

. See Reich, 56 P.3d at 26 ("The continuing violations doctrine allows a plaintiff to establish the elements of a hostile work environment claim by relying on incidents that predate the statutory limitations period to prove that a hostile environment continued into the limitations period.”).

. Sengupta, 21 P.3d at 1249.