In Bolton v. General Motors, 2024 WL 4707965 (N.D.Ind. Nov. 6, 2024), the court, inter alia, dismissed plaintiff’s Title VII hostile work environment claim, on the ground that plaintiff did not “administratively exhaust” that claim at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
From the decision:
Bolton checked the box for discrimination based on race and color and did not indicate that it was a continuing action. Id. General Motors argues that the charge mentions only one discrete act and does not mention any hostile or abusive conditions of Bolton’s employment. General Motors asserts a hostile work environment is not reasonably related to the discrete act of racial discrimination alleged in the EEOC complaint, nor could such a claim grow out of such a charge.
Before a plaintiff may bring a Title VII claim in federal court, he must first exhaust administrative remedies by filing a charge with the EEOC and receiving a right to sue letter. Chaidez v. Ford Motor Co., 937 F.3d 998, 1004 (7th Cir. 2019) (quotation marks and citations omitted). “The primary purpose of the EEOC charge requirement is twofold: it gives the EEOC and the employer a chance to settle the dispute, and it gives the employer notice of the employee’s grievances.” Huri v. Off. of the Chief Judge of the Cir. Ct. of Cook Cnty., 804 F.3d 826, 831 (7th Cir. 2015). After receiving a right to sue letter, a plaintiff may bring in a federal lawsuit only those claims that were included in his EEOC charge, or those that are “ ‘like or reasonably related to the allegations of the EEOC charge and growing out of such allegations.’ ” Lavalais v. Vill. of Melrose Park, 734 F.3d 629, 634 (7th Cir. 2013) (cleaned up). “Claims are like or reasonably related when (1) there is a reasonable relationship between the allegations in the charge and the claims in the complaint and (2) the claim in the complaint can reasonably be expected to grow out of an EEOC investigation of the allegations in the charge. The charge and complaint must, at minimum, describe the same conduct and implicate the same individuals.” Chaidez, 937 F.3d at 1004 (emphasis in original) (quotation marks and citation omitted).
Bolton responds that he could not have included the hostile work environment claim in the EEOC charge because the charge was filed before the work environment became hostile. ECF 108 at 1. He notes that the EEOC charge was filed on May 3, 2021, about a termination on April 30, 2021. April 30 was the date that he was told he was going to be fired, but then told to go ahead and report to work, only to find that his badge had been deactivated and he had to go home. He filed the EEOC charge on May 3, 2021, before he reported to work third shift at General Motors and learned that he wasn’t fired but he had been demoted to working outside. He wasn’t actually terminated until May 25, 2021.
Bolton, thus, admits that he did not include the hostile work environment claim in the EEOC charge because he filed the charge before the environment became hostile. He argues that nonetheless there is overlap between the “gate duty incident” on April 30, 2021, and the hostile work environment because being called a white racist is a factor in both the discriminatory act and the environment being hostile. ECF 108 at 1. But the one-time use of a racial epithet in this situation is not enough to alert investigators of the employer that the charge might include a hostile work environment in addition to the termination. See, e.g., Nichols v. Michigan City Plant Plan. Dep’t, 755 F.3d 594, 601 (7th Cir. 2014) (“[W]hile referring to colleagues with such disrespectful language is deplorable and has no place in the workforce, one utterance of the n-word has not generally been held to be severe enough to rise to the level of establishing liability.”). And the EEOC charge does not otherwise describe ongoing conduct that is typical of a hostile work environment claim. See Nat’l R.R. Passenger Corp. v. Morgan, 536 U.S. 101, 115 (2002) (“Hostile environment claims are different in kind from discrete acts. Their very nature involves repeated conduct.”); Vela v. Vill. of Sauk Vill., 218 F.3d 661, 663-64 (7th Cir. 2000) (EEOC charge alleging sex and national origin discrimination and listing three incidents in which plaintiff was treated differently from non-Mexican male officer was not reasonably related to claim brought in federal complaint alleging repeated sexual harassment on the basis of pictures; jokes; gestures; comments about plaintiff’s body, sexual behavior, and national origin; and other behavior). Nor could a hostile work environment claim reasonably be expected to grow out of an EEOC investigation into the termination, which turned into a demotion. An investigation into whether the demotion was discriminatory would likely delve into the reasons for that demotion and would not go on to investigate the conditions that Bolton later faced because of that demotion.
Bolton blames the person at the EEOC office who helped him fill out the form for advising him to make the charge brief. ECF 108 at 2-4. He says the initial EEOC advisor he spoke to told him it is better to use as few words as possible in initiating the EEOC charge and the advisor drafted the charge, leaving out details that Bolton would have included. Bolton says that after he was terminated on May 25, he called to update the complaint and check on the investigation. But, other than speaking to EEOC employees, he never amended his charge to include additional details that happened after the demotion.
Bad advice from an EEOC advisor cannot excuse leaving out necessary details in the EEOC charge.
The court concluded by noting that since plaintiff’s plaintiff’s hostile work environment claim is unexhausted, it was not necessary to determine whether the complaint’s allegations state a plausible claim.