In Broadway v. University of Maryland, Global Campus, 2023 WL 4421406 (D.Md. July 7, 2023), the court, inter alia, granted defendant’s motion to dismiss plaintiff’s hostile work environment claim.
This decision, like many others, illustrates the application of the “severe or pervasive” standard to such claims.
The court explained:
Plaintiff generally asserts that her immediate supervisors subjected her to workplace harassment, retaliation, and bullying, and makes the following specific factual assertions: (1) in October 2019, Ms. Jameson denied Plaintiff’s request to hold a mediation session with Plaintiff regarding the alleged racial discrimination; (2) on April 21, 2020, Ms. Jameson and Ms. Maguire filed a false reprimand against Plaintiff; (3) the Defendant upheld the false reprimand solely on the basis of Ms. Jameson and Ms. Maguire’s subjective testimony; (4) Defendant’s Accessibility Services Director initially denied Plaintiff’s workplace accommodation request, seeking instead to have Plaintiff take intermittent leave under the FMLA; and (5) during a June 22, 2020, internal grievance hearing, the Defendant disclosed Plaintiff’s health concerns.
As a preliminary matter, Plaintiff’s generalized assertions that she endured workplace harassment and bullying do not support her hostile work environment claim. …
The specific factual allegations that Plaintiff does provide fail to meet the “severe” or “pervasive” standard. Not only does Plaintiff make relatively few factual assertions, mostly relying on “conclusory allegations,” but the few specific instances of conduct are often separated by months at a time, e.g., Ms. Jameson denied Plaintiff’s mediation request in October 2019 then Ms. Jameson and Ms. Maguire filed the false reprimand in April 2020. These few, infrequent instances of conduct, without more, precludes the Court from drawing a reasonable inference that Defendant is liable under a hostile work environment claim.
[Cleaned up.]
The court concluded that “[s]imply put, even when construing the facts in the light most favorable to Plaintiff, Plaintiff’s allegations fall short of the ‘severe’ and ‘pervasive’ standard.”