In Mukhina v. Walmart, Inc., No. 24-11586, 2025 WL 3703679 (11th Cir. Dec. 22, 2025), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, inter alia, affirmed a lower court’s award of summary judgment to defendant on plaintiff’s claim of national origin discrimination (in the form of a hostile work environment) asserted under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
From the decision:
Mukhina experienced daily instances of customers, coworkers, and supervisors laughing at her, mocking her, and becoming angry with her due to her inability to communicate in English. But frustration with her inability to communicate does not constitute harassment based on her national origin. See EEOC v. Catastrophe Mgmt. Sols., 852 F.3d 1018, 1030 (11th Cir. 2016) (holding that Title VII protects immutable characteristics, not cultural practices like a preferred language); see also Garcia v. Gloor, 618 F.2d 264, 268–271 (5th Cir. 1980). And Mukhina failed to provide evidence that incidents where a coworker pushed a shopping cart toward her, prevented her from using a shopping cart, or required her to retrieve her own freight were related to her national origin. See Miller, 277 F.3d at 1275. Only an isolated incident involving a comment about the Russian invasion of Ukraine involved her national origin. But that single utterance was not “physically threatening or humiliating” and did not “unreasonably interfere[ ] with [her] job performance” so that it could be considered severe. Tonkyro, 995 F.3d at 837 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted).
Mukhina cites one precedent for the proposition that “comments about an employee’s accent or linguistic mannerisms support an inference of discrimination based on national origin.” Yet that decision involved more than “comments about an employee’s accent or linguistic mannerisms.” See Akouri v. State of Fla. Dep’t of Transp., 408 F.3d 1338, 1348 (11th Cir. 2005) (upholding jury’s finding of discrimination when a supervisor “blatantly state[d] that the reason [the employee] was passed over for the promotion was his ethnicity”). To be sure, comments about an employee’s accent or linguistic mannerisms can support an inference of discrimination when combined with other harassing conduct motivated by national origin, but Title VII “does not support an interpretation that equates the language an employee prefers to use with his national origin.”
Accordingly, held the court, summary judgment was warranted.