In Paul v. City of Fort Worth, Civil Action No. 4:24-cv-00913-O, 2025 WL 1287920 (N.D.Tex. May 2, 2025), the court denied defendant’s motion to dismiss plaintiff’s hostile work environment sexual harassment claim asserted under Texas law.[1]Note: I am not admitted to practice law in Texas.
The court summarized the black-letter law – noting that the pertinent Texas statute and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 are subjected to the same analytical framework – and applied it, as follows:
To establish a prima facie case of harassment alleging hostile work environment, the employee must establish that:
(1) [she] belongs to a protected group; (2) [she] was subject to unwelcome harassment; (3) the harassment was based on a protected characteristic; (4) the harassment affected a term, condition, or privilege of [her] employment; and (5) [her] employer knew or should have known of the harassment and failed to promptly take remedial action. …
In reviewing a hostile-work-environment claim, a court considers all the circumstances, including the frequency of the discriminatory conduct; its severity; whether it is physically threatening or humiliating, or a mere offensive utterance; and whether it unreasonably interferes with an employee’s work performance. …
First, Plaintiff’s allegations, taken as true, constitute actionable harassment. She alleges the harassment was frequent. She alleges that she felt physically threatened. Her allegations also articulate that she was harassed because she was female. She alleges that Officers Hernandez and Barajas did not treat other men in the same way. And she includes examples of comments that were overtly derogatory towards women. Finally, Plaintiff’s allegations plausibly suggest that the discrimination manifested through her training, as she was re-assigned to different supervisors and subjected to different training than her male counterparts. Contrary to Defendant’s assertion, these facts, taken as true, demonstrate that the alleged discrimination affected a term, condition, or privilege of Plaintiff’s employment.
[Citations and internal quotation marks omitted.]
The court concluded that plaintiff met her burden of alleging that the complained-of conduct was “sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of [her] employment and create an abusive working environment.”
| ↩1 | Note: I am not admitted to practice law in Texas. |
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