In Dawson v. CMA CGM (America), LLC, No. 3:25-CV-00901, 2026 WL 2455379 (M.D. Tenn. Aug. 21, 2026), the court, inter alia, held that plaintiff sufficiently alleged a sex-based hostile work environment claim under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Initially, the court summarized the law as follows:
There are two types of sexual harassment under Title VII and THRA – quid pro quo sexual harassment and hostile work environment. Dawson asserts both types. Defendants challenge only the sufficiency of the pleadings with regard to hostile work environment. … A hostile work environment exists when the workplace is permeated with discriminatory intimidation, ridicule, and insult, that is sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of the victim’s employment and create an abusive working environment. The conduct must be so severe or pervasive as to constitute a hostile or abusive working environment both to the reasonable person and the actual victim. Although courts have sometimes used the language “severe ‘and’ pervasive,” our caselaw is clear that “severe or pervasive” is properly considered in the disjunctive. A plaintiff need not, therefore, necessarily demonstrate the existence of severe conduct if she demonstrates that the sexually charged conduct at issue is sufficiently pervasive. In determining whether sexualized commentary pervades a plaintiff’s workplace, we consider, inter alia, its frequency, whether it is humiliating, and whether it unreasonably interferes with an employee’s performance. Even at summary judgment, a plaintiff may meet her burden of showing that such conduct was pervasive by asserting that it was ongoing, commonplace, and continuing – she need not, that is, recount each and every specific instance of such comments. To allege a hostile work environment, a plaintiff must demonstrate that the conduct at issue was severe or pervasive enough to create an objectively hostile work environment—an environment that a reasonable person would find hostile or abusive.
(Citations omitted; cleaned up; paragraphing altered.)
Applying the law, the court held that plaintiff’s allegations met this standard. Specifically, it noted that the sexual comments at issue here – a manager offering employment benefits in exchange for sexual favors and repeatedly soliciting plaintiff for sex – took place “on numerous occasions” over a period of months.