Cases

An employee brought an employment discrimination suit against her employer while also going through Chapter 13 bankruptcy proceedings. The employee failed to disclose this suit, as well as a separate workers’ compensation claim she was proceeding with, to the bankruptcy court. The district court granted summary judgment to the employer in the employment discrimination suit, ruling that the employee was arguing inconsistent positions and was trying to deceive the court. The circuit court affirmed, holding that the employee had a duty to make an honest disclosure of the totality of her financial situation to the bankruptcy court. The employment discrimination suit qualified as an asset that was property of the bankruptcy estate. The circuit court also held that failing to disclose that suit to the bankruptcy court constituted taking inconsistent positions under oath and that the employee could reasonably be seen as having the intent to make a “mockery of the judicial system.”

A DCF employee of West Indian descent filed a claim against several of her supervisors under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended, and the Florida Civil Rights Act, Chapter 760, Florida Statutes. She alleged that she faced multiple forms of discrimination at the workplace due to her ethnicity. The Court held the employee’s disparate treatment claims against two supervisors to be untimely because she did not file an administrative charge within 365 days of the alleged violation as required by chapter 760. The Court allowed evidence related to those claims to be considered as part of the employee’s hostile environment claim, but the Court held that even then there was not sufficient evidence to suggest an objectionable working environment. As to the employee’s federal disparate treatment claim, the Court held that the “circumstantial evidence” that the employee put forward was not sufficient to support liability.

An employee filed suit against her former employer, claiming that she was terminated because of her national origin. The employer claimed the employee was fired because her store was poorly managed. The employee had previously signed an arbitration agreement with the employer, and the employer asked the court to either dismiss the suit or stay proceedings to allow for arbitration. The court held that the employer was correct in arguing that the suit must proceed through arbitration. Further, the fact that the arbitration agreement would force the employer to arbitrate any claims it had against the employee was deemed adequate consideration for the agreement, and the court found the agreement not to be unconscionable.

A firefighter sued the city of Lake Worth under the Florida Civil Rights Act (FCRA), §§ 760.01-760.10, Fla. Stat. (2004), alleging pregnancy discrimination and retaliation. The trial court granted the city's motion for summary judgment, holding that the FCRA did not prohibit discrimination based on pregnancy. The firefighter appealed. The firefighter, who had requested light duty in the fire department as a result of her pregnancy, was offered a light duty assignment not within the fire department. The firefighter initially objected but ultimately returned to light duty assignments in other departments. The firefighter's suit, filed under the FCRA, alleged discrimination in that other employees with physical restrictions had been accommodated with light duty within the fire department. The appellate court found that the FCRA, unlike the federal statute, 42 U.S.C.S. § 2000e (Title VII), was never amended to specifically state that pregnancy discrimination was a form of sex discrimination. The city argued that this showed that the Florida legislature did not intend to protect pregnancy discrimination as sex discrimination. The appellate court disagreed. Because the Congress intended to prohibit pregnancy discrimination when it enacted Title VII, and because the courts construed Florida statutes patterned after federal statutes in the same manner that the federal statutes were construed, it followed that the sex discrimination prohibited in Florida since 1972 included pregnancy discrimination. Summary judgement for the employer was reversed.

The court held that an employer was entitled to summary judgment on a Title VII discrimination claim wherein plaintiff, a Cuban, alleged she was terminated because of her national origin because plaintiff failed to establish a proper claim because she did not establish that the employer treated similarly situated, non-Cuban employees more favorably or that the employee was replaced by someone outside of her protected class. Some time after the employer had taken steps to look for a replacement for the employee, the employee wrote a letter to the company’s CEO that indicated that she knew she was going to be replaced and felt the reason she was going to be fired was because she was Cuban. The employee also failed to rebut three of the four legitimate nondiscriminatory reasons articulated by the employer for terminating the employee. The employer satisfied its light burden of providing legitimate reasons for terminating the employer by pointing out (1) that the employee’s work performance had been unsatisfactory and that it was contemplating replacing the employee before she ever complained of being discriminated against; (2) a letter sent to the employer from the employee made it clear that she was not happy working for the employer; (3) other employees felt that it would be awkward and counterproductive to continue the employee’s employment; and (4) there was concern that the employee would sabotage the employer’s operations.

An African-American employee claimed that she was subjected to adverse employment actions while she worked for the Alabama Department of Transportation because she complained about racial comments a white employee made after the white employee was involved in an automobile accident with an African-American driver. Although the district court dismissed several claims the employee made in her complaint, and one of three individuals she sued, it denied the remaining defendants' motion for judgment as a matter of law on the employee's claims alleging that they violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and 42 U.S.C.S. § 1981, and entered judgment confirming a jury's decision in favor of the employee. The court of appeals found that the district court erred. The racially insensitive comments the white employee made did not show that the African-American employee was subjected to a hostile work environment, and there was no evidence showing that the employee was subjected to an adverse employment action because she complained about those comments. The court explained that not every uncalled for, ugly, racist statement by a coworker does not qualify as an unlawful employment practice and explained that it is objectively unreasonable to believe that the use of racially discriminatory language on one occasion by one coworker away from the workplace is enough to permeate the workplace with discriminatory intimidation, ridicule, and insult and to alter the conditions of a victim's employment and create an abusive working environment.

Former employees brought an action against an employer, alleging that the employer's method of reducing its workforce disparately impacted the employees based on their ages. Upon the grant of a writ of certiorari, the employees challenged the judgment of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit which held that the employees failed to show that the employer's factors other than age were unreasonable. The employer had its managers rate the employees based on performance, flexibility, and critical skills, with the statistically improbable result that 30 of the 31 employees who were laid off were at least 40 years of age. The employees asserted a disparate-impact claim under the under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA), 29 U.S.C.S. § 621 et seq., and the employer contended that any disparate impact based on age was excepted from liability under 29 U.S.C.S. § 623(f)(1) based on the employer's reliance on reasonable factors other than age (RFOA). The U.S. Supreme Court held that the burden was improperly placed on the employees to show that the employer's criteria were unreasonable, since RFOA was an affirmative defense for which the employer bore both the burden of production and the burden of persuasion. The ADEA set out liability exemptions, including RFOA, in provisions separate from the age discrimination prohibitions and, while the employees were required to identify the challenged layoff factors, the employer that sought to benefit from the RFOA exemption was required to prove that the exemption applied. The Court vacated the judgment finding that the employees failed to show that the employer's layoff criteria were unreasonable and remanded the case for further proceedings.

A former employee, who was African American, sought review of an order granted summary judgment to a university, a supervisor, and a manager, in the employee's suit asserting claims of race discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and 42 U.S.C.S. §§ 1981, 1983, as well as claims of retaliation. The employee alleged that the defendants improperly denied her a promotion; improperly gave her a negative performance evaluation, which resulted in the employee being denied merit pay; and that her salary was comparatively lower than her Caucasian colleagues' salaries. On appeal, the court held that (1) the negative performance evaluation, which led to the denial of a raise, constituted an adverse employment action for purposes of the employee's retaliation and race discrimination claims because the employee's compensation was affected; (2) the university's granting of the merit raise retroactive to when it would have been authorized at least 10 months earlier, absent the negative evaluation, did not preclude the claims based on the negative evaluation, as the employee lost the use of the funds during the time she was not receiving them; and (3) the employee sustained her summary judgment burden of offering evidence to show that appellees' proffered legitimate reasons for denying the employee a promotion were pretextual, particularly where there was evidence that the employee was considered to be the best candidate and that appellees posted the position three times. The court reversed the district court's judgment in part, thus remanding to the district court the employee's retaliation and race discrimination claims against the university and the 42 U.S.C.S. § 1983 race discrimination claim against the supervisor. The district court's judgment was otherwise affirmed.

A correctional officer appealed an order granting summary judgment against her in her suit alleging race discrimination, retaliation, and a hostile work environment under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C.S. § 2000e et seq., and 42 U.S.C.S. §§ 1981, 1983, against defendants, a county personnel board, a supervisor, a warden and his deputy, and a sheriff. Her racial discrimination claim related to a suspension, and thus the failure to promote claim based on the suspension, failed for failure of comparators with nearly identical conduct. The first proposed comparators' conduct had not occurred while violating the policy against wearing a uniform off-duty. The second's conduct was not directed to a high-ranking officer of a neighboring county, as was the officer's. A memorandum explained that suspended employees should not be able to recover for unpaid leave by working overtime. While that policy was not in place when the officer filed her grievance, it had previously been discussed and found appropriate, but not implemented due to staffing shortages; therefore, the retaliation claim failed. Prior satisfactory ratings by prior supervisors were not controlling as they did not involve leave and tardiness issues similar to those the current supervisor noted. The officer’s hostile work environment claim failed because being called "girl" once and hearing two black male employees being called "boys" once were too sporadic and isolated to establish conduct so objectively severe or pervasive as to alter the terms and conditions of employment.

A former employee appealed an order granting summary judgment in favor of the former employer on the employee’s claim that being subjected to a daily exposure to language and radio programming that were particularly offensive to women but not targeted at her satisfied the "based on" and "severe or pervasive" elements of a 42 U.S.C.S. § 2000e-2(a)(1) hostile work environment claim. The alleged crude and "sex specific" language could satisfy the "based on" element in a sexual harassment hostile work environment case even if not directed at the employee. The subject matter of the conversations and jokes that allegedly permeated the office daily included sexual anatomy, masturbation, and female pornography, all of which was discussed in a manner that was more degrading to women than men. The radio programming was also alleged to be similar. For nearly three years, such language and programing was used in the employee's presence every day. Because the alleged conduct was never directed at her, the nature of the overall harassment could not be said to be as objectively severe as conduct previously deemed actionable, but viewing the work environment as a whole, it was abusive even though no single episode crossed Title VII's threshold. The employee presented evidence of sufficient pervasiveness to survive summary judgment, even if none of the incidents, standing alone, were actionable. Accordingly, only a jury could weigh the factors and decide if the harassment was such that a reasonable person would have felt that it affected the conditions of employment.