In Robinson v. District of Columbia, 2024 WL 4722157 (D.D.C. Nov. 8, 2024), the court, inter alia, dismissed plaintiff’s claim of race-based hostile work environment asserted under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
After explaining that plaintiff failed to plead a timely hostile work environment claim, the court continued:
Plaintiff’s hostile work environment claims fail for another reason: he has not stated a plausible claim. Even assuming that the post-April 2018 acts are “adequately linked” to earlier ones, the alleged discriminatory conduct is not “sufficiently severe or pervasive” to rise to the level of a hostile work environment. Baloch, 550 F.3d at 1201 (internal quotation marks omitted).
In determining whether a work environment is “hostile,” a court must consider the “totality of the circumstances,” including “the frequency of the discriminatory conduct, its severity, its offensiveness, and whether it interferes with an employee’s work performance.” Id. (citation omitted). “The bar for demonstrating a hostile work environment is a high one.” Achagzai v. Broad. Bd. of Governors, 170 F. Supp. 3d 164, 183 (D.D.C. 2016). Title VII and the DCHRA are “not intended to function as … ‘general civility code[s]’ that regulate[ ] ‘the ordinary tribulations of the workplace, such as the sporadic use of abusive language, gender-related jokes, and occasional teasing.’ ” Holston v. Yellen, 630 F. Supp. 3d 47, 59 (D.D.C. 2022) (quoting Faragher v. City of Boca Raton, 524 U.S. 775, 788 (1998)) (Title VII); see Clemmons v. Acad. for Educ. Dev., 107 F. Supp. 3d 100, 120 (D.D.C. 2015) (applying the same reasoning to the DCHRA).
Few of Plaintiff’s allegations have anything to do with his race. See Nurridin v. Goldin, 382 F. Supp. 2d 79, 107 (D.D.C. 2005) (finding that, for a hostile work environment to be actionable, “it must be clear that the hostile work environment was the result of discrimination based on protected status”). And, for those that do explicitly mention race, Plaintiff offers little information about the frequency or severity of the supposedly “unwelcome degrading, derogatory, and dismissive remarks” to which he was subjected. Compl. ¶ 52.
Plaintiff makes one conclusory allegation about being the object of what he perceived to be a racially motivated complaint by a coworker and an allegedly racially discriminatory response to that complaint by Dohmann. See id. ¶¶ 27–29. However, Plaintiff provides no facts that would allow the court to discern the nature or contents of the complaint or his supervisor’s response. Plaintiff also claims that he was the object of “racist comments” by his students and that Dohmann failed to correct this environment. See Compl. ¶ 35. But, again, Plaintiff fails to plead any facts regarding the “volume, nature or content” of these comments. Horsey v. U.S. Dep’t of State, 387 F. Supp. 3d 97, 109 (D.D.C. 2019). Without more information, Plaintiff has not plausibly alleged a race-based hostile environment, as opposed to the “ordinary tribulations of the workplace.” Faragher, 524 U.S. at 788 (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Foxworth v. McDonough, 712 F. Supp. 3d 1, 10–12 (D.D.C. 2024) (dismissing a hostile work environment claim for failure to allege severe or pervasive conduct).
Based on this, the court held that dismissal of plaintiff’s Title VII claim, as well as plaintiff’s claim under the D.C. Human Rights Act.