In Miller v. Markwayne Mullin et al, No. 1:25-CV-00703-JRR, 2026 WL 1861955 (D. Md. June 29, 2026), the court, inter alia, granted defendant’s motion to dismiss plaintiff’s race-based hostile work environment claim asserted under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
From the decision:
Here, Defendant argues all the alleged discrete discriminatory incidents set forth by Plaintiffs fall short of demonstrating a hostile work environment “because they are not discriminatory…and because they are insufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of Plaintiffs’ employment.” (ECF No. 33-1 at p. 21.) As with Plaintiffs’ disparate treatment claims, the court finds that Plaintiffs fail to allege facts that would reasonably suggest the conduct described above was motivated by race or sex discrimination.21 As an initial matter, none of the alleged facts concerning the above conduct pertains to Plaintiffs’ sex as female. Further, the two alleged incidents that, construed broadly, address race are: (1) Plaintiffs were denied a bonus that their white coworkers were provided; and (2) Plaintiffs were subjected to a racist, discriminatory image (the monkey emoji sent via Teams message to Plaintiffs by Ms. Amparan).
Regarding the monkey emoji, Plaintiffs do not allege they were offended or distraught by the image when it was sent on December 18, 2020; and Ms. Miller allows that she did not notice it at all and only learned about the emoji following the January 2021 meeting at which Ms. Amparan allegedly confirmed she had “an awareness of the discriminatory nature of such an image.” (ECF No. 1 ¶ 40.) “Isolated instances of offhand comments from co-workers or biased remarks from a supervisor are not sufficient.” Dobson v. Harnden Grp. LLC, No. CV JKB-18-3624, 2019 WL 1242527, at *6 (D. Md. Mar. 18, 2019) (holding that “two isolated incidents, six months apart, in which [the plaintiff’s] coworkers and a superintendent made race based and biased remarks…are not so severe or pervasive as to create an objectively hostile work environment.” Thus, this incident, absent more, does not support a claim for hostile work environment based on race. See Boyer-Liberto v. Fontainebleau Corp., 786 F.3d 264, 284 (4th Cir. 2015) (finding that “a single offensive utterance…generally will not create a hostile work environment without significant repetition or an escalation in the harassment’s severity…[and an] employee will have a reasonable belief that a hostile work environment is occurring if the isolated incident is physically threatening or humiliating.”) (internal citation omitted).
Even were the court to find that Plaintiffs had satisfied elements one and two, finding Plaintiffs adequately allege unwelcome harassment as a result of their race or sex, the alleged conduct would still fail to satisfy the third element, because the conduct complained of was not sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of Plaintiffs’ employment. Plaintiffs do not allege that any of the alleged conduct was physically threatening, humiliating, or interfered with their ability to do their work.
Plaintiffs also do not adequately address or identify the frequency of the alleged discriminatory conduct on which they base their hostile work environment claim. “ ‘[G]eneral allegations’ about a hostile work environment, devoid of ‘accounts of specific dates, times or circumstances,’ are insufficient to even plausibly allege hostile work environment claim.” O’Connell v. Rahn, Civ. No. SAG-18-2515, 2020 WL 1929436, at *5 (D. Md. Apr. 21, 2020) (quoting Carter v. Ball, 33 F.3d 450, 461–62 (4th Cir. 1994)); compare Okoli v. City of Baltimore, 648 F.3d 216, 221 (4th Cir. 2001) (finding a plaintiff had established sufficient frequency of unwelcome or offending conduct where she “suffered upwards of twelve (12) incidents in just four months”), with Rivera v. Prince William Cnty. Sch. Bd., No. 1:09CV341 GBL, 2009 WL 2232746, at *5 (E.D. Va. July 22, 2009) (finding allegations of “four specific instances of alleged harassment within a seventeen-month period” insufficient to allege severe or pervasive harassment). Here, Plaintiffs identify eight instances of alleged harassment, occurring between February 2018 and October 2021, a period spanning more than three and a half years. As most of the alleged conduct was neither continuous nor frequent, the Complaint does not support or permit a reasonable inference of objectively severe or pervasive harassment.
Accordingly, the court concluded that construing the facts in the light most favorable to plaintiffs, the conduct alleged, “while offensive and not conducive to a respectful work environment,” failed to meet the “high bar” to satisfy the test for a hostile work environment under Fourth Circuit precedent.