In Hill v. Denis McDonough, Secretary United States Department of Veterans Affairs, 2023 WL 2061246 (W.D.Mo. Feb. 16, 2023), the court granted defendant’s motion for summary judgment on plaintiff’s race-based hostile work environment claim.
After summarizing the “black letter” law, the court applied it to the facts as follows:
Here, the summary judgment record, viewed in the light most favorable to Plaintiff, does not support a finding of racially charged conduct or comments by supervisors rising to the substantial level required to sustain a hostile-work-environment claim. Plaintiff’s allegations of a racially hostile work environment include Ms. Miller’s references to “these people” in staff meetings, which Plaintiff understood as referring to African-Americans, and being called “boy” by others including a prior supervisor (although Plaintiff makes no such allegation against Ms. Miller). In addition, Defendant does not dispute that Ms. Miller separately met with and separately emailed Plaintiff and another black employee (Sonja Anderson, one of the other three GS-6 Accounting Technicians, including Plaintiff) and “gave them different information than the other teams.” And finally, Plaintiff testified in his deposition that a prior supervisor had questioned whether Plaintiff’s degrees were “real “ and whether Plaintiff had actually earned them. [Cleaned up.]
The court concluded that, although noting that it “in no way condones the alleged behavior,” the conduct alleged does not rise to the level of an actionable hostile work environment.