In Jones v. Fluor Facility & Plant Services, No. 24-5249, 2025 WL 707869 (6th Cir. 2025), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed a lower court’s award of summary judgment dismissing plaintiff’s race-based hostile work environment claim asserted under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
After summarizing the elements of a hostile work environment claim, the court applied the law to the facts. As to the issue of whether the alleged hostile work environment was “based on race,” the court explained:
Jones must first demonstrate a genuine dispute of material fact as to whether the harassment he experienced was based on his race. Indeed, Title VII “does not prohibit all verbal or physical harassment in the workplace; it is directed only at discrimination” that occurs because of an employee’s membership in a protected group, in this case, Jones’ race. Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Servs. Inc., 523 U.S. 75, 80 (1998) (internal quotation marks omitted) (alteration adopted) (discussing Title VII’s prohibition against discrimination in the context of sex).
The district court concluded that Jones evidenced “a few incidents of racist language and joking,” prior to Thornberry’s November 9 anti-harassment meeting, including “three uses of the N-word, only one of which was actually directed towards him as a ‘term of endearment.’ ” Op. & Order, R. 42, Page ID #750.4 It also identified Bowersock’s comment about Johnson being Jones’ boy as “arguably racial.” Id. at 751. And it inferred that the “incident where Bowerso[ck] poured grease on Jones’ windshield,” though “not explicitly racial in nature,” was “race based” because of “Jones’ other allegations related to Bowerso[ck].” Id. But the district court discounted other facially neutral conduct, like Jones’ “assertions that his coworkers ignored or isolated him,” because there was “insufficient information to support a reasonable inference that [the conduct] was based on Jones’ race.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted).
The district court erred in this conclusion. We conclude that Jones has established, at the very least, a factual dispute as to whether this seemingly neutral conduct was race-related. We have said that “[c]onduct that is not explicitly race-based may be illegally race-based and properly considered in a hostile-work-environment analysis when it can be shown that but for the employee’s race, [ ]he would not have been the object of harassment.” Clay v. United Parcel Serv., Inc., 501 F.3d 695, 706 (6th Cir. 2007).
In Schlosser v. VRHabilis, LLC, 113 F.4th 674 (6th Cir. 2024), we considered a similar pattern of harassment, albeit one based on sex. The plaintiff presented evidence of two types of harassment, each of which was “fairly … tied” to her gender. Id. at 685–86. First, she presented “repeated incidents that may have facially presented as sex-neutral, but circumstantial evidence would allow a reasonable jury to determine that the incident was gender related.” Id. at 686. The “facially neutral” evidence the plaintiff relied on included the fact that the plaintiff, as the only female diver on her diving crew, was singled out repeatedly as “the only employee asked to perform a knot test, the only employee prohibited from diving multiple times, and the only employee prohibited from driving the company vehicle.” Id. Second, she presented evidence of “verbal harassment” that was gender-specific and charged with “anti-female animus.” Id. We held that “the multiple instances in which Schlosser was ostracized while her male counterparts were not, coupled with the gender-specific epithets used, provide sufficient evidence for a reasonable jury to find that the complained of harassment was based on Schlosser’s gender or sex.” Id. at 686–87.
As in Schlosser, Jones presents evidence of two categories of incidents fairly tied to his race. The first set of incidents are verbal harassment directly linked to Jones’ race, the second set of incidents may facially present as race-neutral, but a factfinder could nevertheless infer that they were race-based. See id.; Clay, 501 F.3d at 706.
As to the first category, Jones established three uses of the n-word by his coworkers: One direct usage, when Walpole referred to Jones as a “nigger,” and two indirect usages, when Fleming used the term during the November 9 meeting to argue that it should be okay to continue to refer to Jones that way. The n-word is indubitably racist, “highly offensive and demeaning,” McGinest v. GTE Serv. Corp., 360 F.3d 1103, 1116 (9th Cir. 2004), whether used directly or indirectly, or, indeed, as a “term of endearment.” See id. at 1116–17; Johnson v. United Parcel Serv., 117 F. App’x 444, 454 (6th Cir. 2004) (“Case law makes clear that the use of the word ‘nigger,’ even taken in isolation, is not a ‘mere offensive utterance.’ ”).
As the district court acknowledged, Jones also submitted evidence that Bowersock goaded him to make racist jokes, and Bowersock told racist jokes himself. Whether Jones’ evidence of the “content or frequency” of these occurrences was insufficient, or whether they were “mere offensive utterances,” as the district court concluded, Op. & Order, R. 42, Page ID #750 (internal quotation marks omitted), goes to whether the harassment Jones faced was severe or pervasive, but not to whether the harassment was race-based. A factfinder could readily conclude that “but for” Jones’ race, he would not have been the subject of Bowersock’s goading. See Clay, 501 F.3d at 706. The same is true for Bowersock’s comment that another white coworker, Johnson, was Jones’ “boy” after Johnson spilled oil on himself. Jones fairly understood this comment to be racial in nature, as it allows the inference that Bowersock was implying a familial relationship between Johnson and Jones after Johnson’s skin was presumably rendered black because of the oil.
As to incidents that may present as facially neutral, but from which a factfinder could nevertheless infer racial animus, we first consider the incident in which Bowersock threw grease on Jones’ windshield. The district court described this incident as susceptible to the inference that it was “race based” because of “Jones’ other allegations related to Bowerso[ck].” Op. & Order, R #42, Page ID #751. We agree. As discussed, Bowersock racially harassed Jones prior to the grease incident by goading him to make racist jokes or making racist jokes himself. And he continued to racially harass Jones after the grease incident, in part by making the Johnson comment. We have stated that “facially neutral abusive conduct can support a finding of animus sufficient to sustain a hostile work environment claim when that conduct is viewed in the context of other, overtly discriminatory conduct.” Jordan v. City of Cleveland, 464 F.3d 584, 596 (6th Cir. 2006) (cleaned up); see also Clay, 501 F.3d at 706–07. Bowersock’s race-based comments thus give rise to the inference that the grease-throwing was also racially motivated. See Schlosser, 113 F.4th at 686.
For the same reasons, we can attribute racial motivation to the night crew’s ostracization of Jones. There were “multiple instances in which [Jones] was ostracized” as the only African American on the night crew. See id. As Thornberry testified, efforts to exclude Jones were led by Bowersock and Fleming, who had previously made racist comments or used racial epithets. Further, the ostracization coincided with racist verbal harassment. This provides sufficient evidence for a reasonable factfinder to conclude that Jones’ complained-of ostracization was based on race. See id.; Jordan, 464 F.3d at 596–97 ( (considering “racial insults, isolation and segregation” to support proof of discriminatory animus); Clay, 501 F.3d at 707 (considering the plaintiff’s status as the “only black employee in her work area,” and the only employee to receive discipline for certain conduct, to support an “inference, sufficient to survive summary judgment, that race was the motivating reason” behind her supervisor’s behavior).
A rational factfinder could also find that other incidents cited by Jones that may lack explicit racial animus may nevertheless constitute racial harassment under Title VII. For one, Jones presented evidence that his white coworkers referred to him as “boy.” We have said that although not explicitly racial, a white colleague “referring to an adult African American colleague as ‘boy,’ without ‘modifiers or qualifications’ can qualify as evidence of impermissible racial bias.” Strickland, 995 F.3d at 504 (quoting Ash v. Tyson Foods, Inc., 546 U.S. 454, 456 (2006)). We need not discount Jones’ evidence that his coworkers called him “boy” because he heard it secondhand from Thornberry, because “[i]t is well-established that incidents of racial harassment that a plaintiff learns of secondhand and did not personally experience may ‘contribute to a work environment that was hostile.’ ” Id. (quoting Jackson v. Quanex Corp. (Jackson-Quanex), 191 F.3d 647, 661 (6th Cir. 1999). Likewise, white coworkers’ comments referencing Jones being a rapper or a basketball player may not be explicitly racial out of context. But these comments undoubtedly reflected African American stereotypes such that a rational factfinder could find that they would not have been made but for Jones’ race, as Jones recognized. See Pl.’s Dep., R. 38-2, Page ID #326–27 (Jones testifying that he was told he “was a rapper … because I was Black, and they were stereotyping me”). Therefore, the comments may be “properly considered in a hostile-work- environment analysis.” Clay, 501 F.3d at 706.
Based on this, the court held that plaintiff has “created an inference, sufficient to survive summary judgment, that race was the motivating reason” behind his coworkers’ harassment and ostracization, warranting its conclusion that the district court erred in concluding otherwise.
Next, the court likewise held that factual issues existed as to whether the alleged harassment was “severe or pervasive.”