In Watkins v. Mack Trucks, Inc., 2025 WL 2086107 (E.D.Pa. July 24, 2025), the court, inter alia, denied defendant’s motion for summary judgment on plaintiff’s claim of a race-based hostile work environment claim asserted under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
From the decision:
[T]he remaining record could permit a reasonable jury to conclude that Plaintiff was subjected to sufficiently severe discrimination to constitute a hostile work environment based on race. Plaintiff says that she was subjected to several instances of racially offensive images: (1) she saw racial slurs written in the bathroom including “F-U N—-r” and “N—–s leave, we don’t want you here” and (2) one of her co-workers sent “a racist blackface image, with bulging eyes and big lips” that was left at someone’s desk to her so that she could help him figure out what to do about the image. ECF No. 46 at 16. To the extent that Defendant disputes these allegations, the Court finds that this amounts to a “genuine” factual dispute that precludes summary judgment. See ECF No. 50 at ¶¶ 37-41; see also Cephalon, Inc., 954 F.3d at 618. Further, Plaintiff’s allegations of encountering racist depictions could, on their own; “allow a reasonable jury to find that [Plaintiff’s] work environment at [Mack] was objectively hostile.” Robinson v. Consol Pennsylvania Coal Co. LLC, 425 F. Supp. 3d 433, 446 (W.D. Pa. 2019); see also Castleberry, 863 F.3d at 265 (“[A]lthough a racially offensive carving on a workplace wall was an isolated act, it was severe enough that a reasonable jury could find that [plaintiff’s] work environment was objectively hostile.”). Factoring in Plaintiff’s assertions that she was treated poorly by white male employees—specifically, that Damian Brandes stalked her, intentionally bumped her twice, and tried to trip her, and that other white men would spit their tobacco at her—strengthens the record from which a reasonable jury could find that the alleged conduct was sufficiently severe. ECF No. 46 at 16.
There is also enough in the record form which a reasonable jury could determine that the conduct alleged by Plaintiff would detrimentally affect a reasonable person in her circumstance. Plaintiff alleges that she was exposed to the word “n—-r” in her workplace on several occasions. As another court in this Circuit put it: “The Court expresses its sincere hope that little need be said to establish the objective offensiveness, and the severity of that offense, of the word ‘n—-r.’ ” Nuness v. Simon & Schuster, Inc., 325 F. Supp. 3d 535, 547 (D.N.J. 2018). But to be absolutely clear: Such a “discriminatory remark” is “objectively offensive” and “any reasonable person similarly situated would be harshly impacted” by it. Mikayla Overton v. The Meadows at Summit for Nursing & Rehabilitation LLC, D/B/A The Gardens at Wyoming Valley, 2025 WL 1888217, at *5 (M.D. Pa. July 8, 2025). As a result, a jury could also find that the alleged conduct would be detrimental to a rational person in Plaintiff’s position.
The court concluded that “[g]iven that Plaintiff has offered enough evidence from which a jury may conclude that she meets both the second and forth prongs, and drawing all reasonable inferences in her favor, Plaintiff’s allegation that she was subjected to a racially hostile work environment survives summary judgment.”