In Hill v. Oak Street Health MSO LLC, 2023 WL 4206065 (E.D.Mich. June 27, 2023), the court, inter alia, dismissed plaintiff’s hostile work environment claim asserted under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
This case concerns Title VII’s “administrative exhaustion” requirement, which the court explained as follows:
Congress provided the EEOC with initial enforcement responsibilities in the procedures for challenging unlawful employment discrimination under Title VII. As such, an employee who alleges employment discrimination under Title VII must first file a timely administrative charge with the EEOC, and the charge must be sufficiently precise to identify the parties, and to describe generally the action or practices complained of. However, because aggrieved employees—and not attorneys—usually file charges with the EEOC, their pro se complaints are construed liberally, so that courts may also consider claims that are reasonably related to or grow out of the factual allegations in the EEOC charge. In other words, when facts related with respect to the charged claim would prompt the EEOC to investigate a different, uncharged claim, the plaintiff is not precluded from bringing suit on that claim. [Cleaned up.]
Applying the law, the court explained:
Here, the EEOC charge of discrimination contains merely discrete acts by the Defendant, but more importantly, it contains no allegations from which a hostile-work-environment claim based on sex could be reasonably inferred. Discrimination in this form occurs when the workplace is permeated with discriminatory intimidation, ridicule, and insult that is sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of the victim’s employment and create an abusive working environment. The hostile work environment claim based on sex under Title VII is therefore dismissed for failure to exhaust administrative remedies. [Cleaned up.]
Accordingly, this case illustrates that while “adverse action” discrimination (often referred to as “disparate treatment”) and “hostile work environment” are – pursuant to judicial interpretation – both types of “discrimination” as that term is used in Title VII, merely alleging one in an EEOC charge does not place the EEOC on notice of the other.