In Onely v. Redner’s Markets, Inc., No. 21-4785, 2023 WL 6626120 (E.D.Pa. Oct. 11, 2023), the court, inter alia, denied defendant’s motion for summary judgment on plaintiff’s claims of race discrimination and race-based hostile work environment asserted under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and 42 U.S.C. § 1981.
As to plaintiff’s hostile work environment claims, the court explained:
On this record, drawing all reasonable inferences in her favor, a rational jury could conclude that Plaintiff was subjected to sufficiently pervasive racial discrimination to constitute a hostile work environment. There are genuine disputes over the exact scope of the racially discriminatory comments that Plaintiff faced at both the Lansdale and Audubon locations from Goodman and McGrory, and drawing all reasonable inferences in her favor, In re Chocolate Confectionary Antitrust Litig., 801 F.3d 383, 396 (3d Cir. 2015) (citation omitted), these could, if proven at trial, “be aggregated to make out a hostile work environment claim.” O’Connor, 440 F.3d at 127.
Plaintiff was subjected to racist comments and a racially charged work environment throughout her time working for Defendant. At the Lansdale location, Goodman called her “Celo,” a reference to a Black drug dealer from a movie. Defendant does not dispute the racialized nature of Goodman’s nickname for Plaintiff. Importantly, from this comment, a rational jury could infer that this and other instances of Goodman’s poor treatment of Plaintiff, spanning months,15 were motivated by racial animus.
Moreover, a rational jury further could conclude based on disputed material facts that, once Plaintiff moved to the Audubon location, McGrory subjected her to a barrage of comments that indicated that she viewed her Black colleagues with contempt and viewed Black people as inferior. Based on several conversations between the two, Plaintiff understood McGrory as (1) consistently dismissive of instances police violence against Black people, including contending that George Floyd had not been killed by a police officer; (2) a vigorous opponent of the Black Lives Matter movement; and (3) having open contempt for other racial minority groups. While the Court heeds Defendant’s argument that McGrory’s comments “constituted discourse on issues of public concern at the time,” at the summary judgment stage, a rational factfinder could draw an alternate inference—that the way she spoke with Plaintiff crossed the line and evinced anti-Black animus that unreasonably interfered with Plaintiff’s ability to do her job.
And the discrimination that Plaintiff faced was not limited to utterances alone. A rational factfinder could conclude that McGrory’s conduct during her final argument with Plaintiff was not just offensive, but threatening. Plaintiff testified that when she pressed McGrory on her views about the causes of social unrest in the summer of 2020, McGrory cursed at Plaintiff, throwing a pan that she was cleaning into the sink in anger and exiting the building. Some of the particulars of their interaction are in dispute—contrary to McGrory’s testimony, Plaintiff insists that she did not follow McGrory away from the sink—but at the summary judgment stage, as was the case at the motion to dismiss stage, McGrory’s conduct here could help form the basis for a racial hostile work environment claim.
As with Goodman, McGrory’s own testimony and conduct strengthen the inferences that a rational jury could draw about Plaintiff’s facially race-neutral interactions with her. McGrory admitted that she has used the n-word before, if not in front of Plaintiff. McGrory further conceded that she only complained to management about the conduct of two colleagues, both of them Black. Specifically, she complained to management that another Black colleague’s dyed, braided hair was “very offensive.” In light of the well-established history of discrimination that Black women have faced on account of their hairstyles,16 a rational jury could infer from McGrory’s views of Tou’s hair that this complaint and other comments that she made to Plaintiff were based in racial animus. Finally, in her written complaint, McGrory expressed her frustration that Plaintiff “continue[d] to play the race card.” This evidence reinforces a reasonable inference that a jury could make that even seemingly innocuous questions about Plaintiff’s interracial marriage could have been rooted in discriminatory animus.
Accordingly, the court concluded that “[t]aken as a whole and drawing all reasonable inferences in her favor, a rational jury thus could conclude that the comments Plaintiff faced from Goodman and McGrory constitute the ‘thousand cuts’ that render discrimination sufficiently pervasive to satisfy that element of the prima facie case of hostile work environment discrimination.”