Court Opinion

ID: 9478208
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:43:09.280399+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:18.134073
License: Public Domain

ALAN E. NORRIS, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
To the extent that the majority has framed the issue in this appeal as hinging upon the district court’s reliance upon this *351court’s opinion in Rabidue v. Osceola Refining Co., 805 F.2d 611 (6th Cir.1986), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 107 S.Ct. 1983, 95 L.Ed.2d 823 (1987), and promulgates a standard for assessing Title VII claims for racial harassment in the work place which is inconsistent with the standard promulgated by the Supreme Court in Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson, 477 U.S. 57, 106 S.Ct. 2399, 91 L.Ed.2d 49 (1986), I dissent. I do, however, concur in the result arrived at by the majority.
Apparently, the majority harbors a distaste for this court’s opinion in Rabidue, a case involving sexual harassment in the work place, since pains are taken to scold the district court for looking to that opinion for guidance. But, in its fervor to distance itself from Rabidue, the majority would leave this circuit with different standards for measuring Title VII claims based on hostile work environments, depending upon whether they are predicated on race discrimination or sex discrimination. It is because I believe that result is at odds with the Supreme Court’s opinion in Vinson, that I dissent.
The majority stakes its case on this court’s opinion in Erebia v. Chrysler Plastics Prod. Corp., 772 F.2d 1250 (6th Cir.1985), cert. denied, 475 U.S. 1015, 106 S.Ct. 1197, 89 L.Ed.2d 311 (1986), an opinion which predated the Supreme Court’s holding in Vinson. In promulgating the “mul-ti-factor test” referred to by the majority, Rabidue relied upon Vinson, and cited Erebia as supporting a proposition sufficiently analogous to lend support. I cannot agree with the majority’s assertion that “Erebia remains the controlling law for racially hostile work environment claims in this circuit,” since the majority in that case was unable to anticipate Vinson with complete accuracy, and, understandably, the opinion is to some extent inconsistent with Vinson.
Vinson, when read together with the cases upon which it relies, instructs us that, in order to state a claim under Title VII for either race or sexual harassment in the work place, the conduct complained of must be sufficiently pervasive to alter the conditions of employment and create an abusive working environment, and it must be sufficiently severe and persistent to affect seriously the psychological well-being of employees. Vinson, 477 U.S. at 65-67, 106 S.Ct. at 2405.
In Rabidue, this court required that “the charged sexual harassment [have] the effect of unreasonably interfering with the plaintiff’s work performance and creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive working environment that affected seriously the psychological well-being of the plaintiff.” 805 F.2d at 619. Since this standard is consistent with Vinson, and in that opinion the Supreme Court accorded indistinguishable treatment to Title VII claims for race and sexual harassment in the work place, I am unable to agree with the majority that the district court was culpable of misplaced reliance in looking to Rabidue for guidance.
Because the district court was warranted in its conclusion that plaintiffs simply did not introduce evidence adequate to establish conduct sufficiently pervasive to alter their conditions of employment and create an abusive working environment, and of a sufficiently severe and persistent nature to affect seriously their psychological well-being, I would affirm the court’s disposition of the hostile work environment claim on that basis, as well as upon the plaintiffs’ failure to satisfy the appropriate standard of proof for respondeat superior liability.