In Wheeler v. Anne Arundel County, Maryland et al, No. CV JKB-25-3558, 2026 WL 1679123 (D. Md. June 10, 2026), the court, inter alia, denied defendants’ motion to dismiss plaintiff’s hostile work environment claim asserted under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
From the decision:
To state a Title VII hostile work environment claim, a plaintiff must plausibly allege: (1) unwelcome conduct (2) based on a protected characteristic (3) that was severe or pervasive enough to make her work environment hostile or abusive, (4) that was imputable to her employer, and (5) the protected characteristic was the “but for” cause of the alleged harassment. Laurent-Workman v. Wormuth, 54 F.4th 201, 210 (4th Cir. 2022).
Plaintiff alleges that the combination of several incidents occurring after August 2022 created a hostile work environment. (ECF No. 1 ¶ 119.) First, she argues that supervisors “amplified trivial incidents against Plaintiff while ignoring her complaints.” (Id. ¶ 122.) But she does not point to any allegations which suggest that this treatment was based on a protected characteristic. Second, Plaintiff notes that she was barred from entering AADF while under investigation whereas comparators such as Officer Bailey were allowed to work in the building while facing termination. (Id. 123.) But Plaintiff never states the race or sex of Officer Bailey in the Complaint. Thus, even if the Court assumes that this allegation is relevant to a hostile work environment claim insofar as it constitutes allegedly unwelcome conduct, the Court has no basis to conclude that it was based on a protected characteristic.
That leaves one final incident: the “severe racial and gender-based slur” that an inmate allegedly directed at Plaintiff in October 2022. (Id. ¶¶ 32, 121.) The Fourth Circuit has made clear that even a single utterance of a racial slur—and in particular, the odious racial slur that was allegedly uttered here—is “severe enough to engender a hostile work environment.” Boyer-Liberto v. Fontainebleau Corp., 786 F.3d 264, 280 (4th Cir. 2015) (en banc). As the Fourth Circuit observed, “perhaps no single act can more quickly alter the conditions of employment and create an abusive working environment than the use of an unambiguously racial epithet such as” the precise one allegedly said here. Id. To be sure, there are differences between this case and Boyer-Liberto. In Boyer-Liberto, a supervisor directed the racial slur at the plaintiff, who was a cocktail waitress at a hotel. Id. at 269–70. Meanwhile, here, it was an inmate, not a supervisor, who directed the slur at Plaintiff. (ECF No. 1 ¶ 32.) As two Courts of Appeals have noted, “[b]y choosing to work in a prison, corrections personnel have acknowledged and accepted the probability that they will face inappropriate and socially deviant behavior.” Vajdl v. Mesabi Acad. of KidsPeace, Inc., 484 F.3d 546, 550 (8th Cir. 2007) (quoting Slayton v. Ohio Dep’t of Youth Servs., 206 F.3d 669, 677 (6th Cir. 2000)). But the core teaching of Boyer-Liberto is that some words are, by their nature, so offensive that their utterance just one time is beyond the bounds of what is acceptable in the workplace. See Boyer-Liberto, 786 F.3d at 280. Depending on the conduct of the employer, this can be true even when one’s workplace is a prison. Here, based on the overall context as alleged, Plaintiff has sufficiently alleged a hostile work environment.
Although uttered by an inmate, the slur is attributable to the County because Sgt. Blackburn, a supervisor, “told Plaintiff to ‘let it go’ in front of the inmates.” (ECF No. 1 ¶¶ 28, 32); see Faragher v. City of Boca Raton, 524 U.S. 775, 807 (1998) (holding that, under Title VII, employers can be vicariously liable for the actions of supervisors). In this way, if the allegation is true as the Court must assume at this stage, Sgt. Blackburn arguably “fail[ed] to take immediate and appropriate corrective action in response to a hostile work environment” of which he was aware. Beckford v. Dep’t of Corr., 605 F.3d 951, 957–58 (11th Cir. 2010) (citation omitted). On these “facts,” the County’s alleged failure to remedy the abusive treatment of Plaintiff was plausibly negligent, which would make it liable under Title VII for creating a hostile work environment. See, e.g., id. at 958 (holding that prisons can be liable for a hostile work environment created by inmate behavior when the prison negligently fails to take corrective action to stop the abusive behavior); Erickson v. Wis. Dep’t of Corr., 469 F.3d 600, 605 (7th Cir. 2006) (same); Slayton v. Ohio Dep’t of Youth Servs., 206 F.3d 669, 677 (6th Cir. 2000) (same).
Based on this, the court held that the County’s motion to dismiss plaintiff’s Title VII hostile work environment claim will be denied.