In Garduno v. Capable Controls, Inc., No. 23 CV 2549, 2023 WL 6276564 (N.D.Ill. Sept. 26, 2023), the court, inter alia, denied defendant’s motion to dismiss plaintiff’s sexual harassment claim asserted under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
In this case, plaintiff alleged that shortly after starting work, she discovered that one of her managers regularly watched pornography in his office, and that while she complained about it, her complaints were ignored.
As to plaintiff’s hostile work environment claim, the court explained:
Here, the complaint alleges that, throughout the duration of Plaintiff’s employment with the company, Defendant had a practice or policy of condoning Tennyson’s habit of watching pornography in close proximity to Plaintiff, the only female in the office. Indeed, Plaintiff states that she repeatedly complained about Tennyson’s behavior, but Defendant consistently failed to take any action in response, thereby allowing Tennyson’s pornography-viewing to continue with “zero ramifications.” Such allegations are sufficient to plausibly state a sexual harassment claim under a hostile work environment theory, as opposed to a discrete incident of harassment. See Jackson v. Cnty. of Racine, 474 F.3d 493, 499 (7th Cir. 2005) (explaining a hostile work environment is one in which the sexual harassment is sufficiently “severe or pervasive enough to alter the conditions of employment and create an abusive working environment”).
The court further rejected defendant’s “rigid” reading of plaintiff’s EEOC charge, finding that “though the charge does not describe the full extent of the pornography issue, the allegations in the complaint show how the incidents that Plaintiff mentioned in the EEOC charge relate to one another and form part of a single hostile work environment claim.”