In Strozier v. Winn-Dixie, No. 7:24-CV-1452-EGL, 2026 WL 907084 (N.D. Ala. Apr. 2, 2026), the court, inter alia, granted defendant’s motion for summary judgment on plaintiff’s hostile work environment sexual harassment asserted under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
From the decision:
Title VII prohibits hostile work environment sexual harassment. To establish a hostile work environment claim arising out of sexual harassment under Title VII, a plaintiff must show that he (1) belongs to a protected group; (2) experienced unwelcome harassment; (3) the harassment was based on sex; (4) the harassment was sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter employment conditions; and (5) a basis for employer liability.
Winn-Dixie claims that Strozier has failed to show that the alleged harassment was severe or pervasive enough to alter the terms and conditions of his employment, and that he cannot demonstrate Winn-Dixie’s liability for the alleged harassment.
To establish a hostile work environment, a plaintiff must show harassment that is both subjectively and objectively severe or pervasive. Mendoza, 195 F.3d at 1246. The objective inquiry depends on examining the totality of the circumstances. Those circumstances are considered through four factors: (1) frequency; (2) severity; (3) whether the conduct was physically threatening or humiliating, rather than merely offensive; and (4) whether it unreasonably interfered with the employee’s job performance.
Strozier’s harassment was neither severe nor pervasive. He was never touched or threatened, was not subjected to quid pro quo demands, and offers no evidence that the conduct impaired his work. He even, at times, participated in the offensive banter. Though being propositioned, shown pictures of male genitalia, and subjected to a handful of euphemistic remarks over several months is certainly offensive and annoying, those acts are less severe or pervasive than harassment that the Eleventh Circuit has rejected as insufficient to meet the standard for a hostile work environment. For example, in Leeth v. Tyson Foods, Inc., 449 F. App’x 849, 851-53 (11th Cir. 2011), the court affirmed summary judgment where a supervisor tried to pull the plaintiff onto his lap, commented that he wanted to “ram his tongue down her throat,” visited her home uninvited, and repeatedly asked her out and propositioned her. And in Lockett v. Choice Hotels Int’l, Inc., 315 F. App’x 862, 863-65 (11th Cir. 2009), the court affirmed summary judgment despite repeated sexual comments over months, such as talking “about sexual positions, that he would lick her ‘p-u-s-s-y’, that ‘he would go down on [her] good,’ that her boyfriend ‘aint F’ing [her] right,’ and that she needed to ‘get with a real guy,’” as well as repeated attempts to hug her, and a single instance of touching her buttocks.
(Cleaned up.)
The court concluded that “[e]ven if a jury concluded that everything Strozier describes occurred, that evidence would be insufficiently severe or pervasive to sustain a sexual harassment hostile work environment claim under Title VII.”