In Magassouba v. Prince George’s County, Maryland et al, No. 8:23-CV-00767-TJS, 2026 WL 1396051 (D. Md. May 19, 2026), the court, inter alia, denied defendant’s motion for judgment, renewed motion for judgment, or in the alternative, motion for a new trial, following a jury verdict in plaintiff’s favor on his retaliation claim under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
From the decision:
Plaintiff is a man from Africa.1 When he expressed his disagreement with Porter’s discriminatory characterization of African men, referring to her comments as unfairly “generalizing,” he engaged in protected activity under Title VII’s Opposition Clause. Although Plaintiff’s pushback against Porter’s stereotyping was informal and conversational, it objectively communicated a belief to Porter that her comments reflected an impermissible, stereotype-driven, discriminatory view of African men as a group. That is sufficient under Crawford: when an employee communicates to his employer a belief that the employer has engaged in employment discrimination, “that communication virtually always constitutes the employee’s opposition to the activity.” 555 U.S. at 276 (internal quotation marks omitted).
The threshold for oppositional conduct is not onerous, DeMasters, 796 F.3d at 417, and the Fourth Circuit has made clear that protected opposition encompasses informal protests and voicing one’s opinions to bring attention to discriminatory conduct. Laughlin, 149 F.3d at 259-60. Plaintiff was not required to invoke the words “Title VII” or “discrimination” for his objection to qualify as protected activity. What matters is that his conduct, viewed as a whole, communicated opposition to what he reasonably believed was national-origin-based stereotyping by a supervisory employee, a practice that is unlawful under Title VII. See 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a)(1)-(2); Boyer-Liberto, 786 F.3d at 278 (explaining that an “isolated incident” can “amount to discriminatory changes in the terms and conditions of employment” if that incident is “extremely serious,” especially when a supervisor is involved in the hostile work environment).
After Plaintiff expressed his disagreement with Porter’s discriminatory characterization of African men, he experienced a number of unwelcome adverse actions by his employer: his request for vacation leave was denied, he was designated as absent without official leave when he was sick, he was subjected to heightened scrutiny when he reported the lack of cell phone service in an elevator, he was required to give a duress statement to a subordinate officer after incurring minor damage to his police cruiser, he was issued a written reprimand for leaving his weapon at home, and he was denied requests for overtime pay for time he had worked.
The jury could have reasonably concluded that Plaintiff’s verbal disagreement with Porter’s discriminatory characterization of African men was opposition to an employment practice that Plaintiff believed to be unlawful: a supervisor making demeaning and racist remarks about African men, to a male African subordinate, in a workplace setting. Plaintiff’s opposition to Porter’s racist remark was objectively reasonable in light of the facts. See Peters v. Jenney, 327 F.3d 307, 321 (4th Cir. 2003); see also Boyer-Liberto, 786 F.3d at 282 (“[A]n employee is protected from retaliation when [he] opposes a hostile work environment that, although not fully formed, is in progress.”). Because Plaintiff expressed his disagreement with Porter verbally in person, his employer was necessarily aware of his oppositional activity.
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The jury could have reasonably concluded that the unwelcome conduct that followed Plaintiff’s disagreement with Porter’s “African men” comment would not have occurred but for Plaintiff’s protected activity, and that the unwelcome conduct was sufficiently severe or pervasive to dissuade a reasonable worker from making or supporting a charge of discrimination.
In sum, construing the evidence in plaintiff’s favor, the court found that there was substantial evidence in the record to support the jury’s finding that plaintiff was subjected to a retaliatory hostile work environment by defendant.