In Joyner v. 95 Percent Group, LLC, No. CV RDB-26-1852, 2026 WL 2130607 (D. Md. July 24, 2026), the court, inter alia, denied defendant’s motion to dismiss plaintiff’s claim of a retaliatory hostile work environment under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
In sum, to state a claim of retaliation under Title VII, a plaintiff must plausibly allege three elements: (1) that she engaged in protected activity; (2) that her employer took a materially adverse action against her; and (3) that there is a causal connection between the protected activity and the adverse action.
As to the first element, protected activity, the court explained:
At this pleading stage, Ms. Joyner has sufficiently alleged an objectively reasonable belief that she was subject to a developing hostile work environment. Under the first element of hostile work environment, “an employee can demonstrate that certain conduct is unwelcome simply by voicing her objection to the alleged harasser or to the employer. The alleged conduct need not be severe, as severity is better addressed under the third element[.]” Ms. Joyner alleges multiple instances of “voic[ing] her discomfort” to Ms. Whiteman, Ms. Wetter, the company CEO, and Human Resources. Relatedly, under the second element, an employee may demonstrate that conduct is related to her protected activity based on the totality of the circumstances, including the “social context” of the alleged conduct. Ms. Joyner has alleged that the unwelcome conduct included cornering her in a bathroom while commenting that complaining did not fit the company’s culture, which alone is sufficient to allege that the unwelcome conduct related to her complaints. Moreover, she has sufficiently alleged that the demotion and refusal to promote also occurred at least in part in response to her complaints.
With respect to the third element of a hostile work environment, “[t]he employee must both personally and reasonably believe that the conduct rises to the level of a hostile environment.” The personal belief aspect can be satisfied simply by raising “numerous complaints and…characteriz[ing] such behavior as creating a hostile environment.” For the objective component, “an employee will have a reasonable belief that a hostile work environment is occurring based on an isolated incident if that harassment was physically threatening or humiliating.” In this case, Ms. Joyner has sufficiently alleged the subjective belief component because she repeatedly raised complaints of a hostile work environment. Likewise, she has sufficiently alleged an objectively reasonable belief based on the alleged bathroom incident on September 15, 2023. Ms. Joyner alleges that during this incident, Ms. Wetter and Ms. Whiteman physically blocked her from leaving the bathroom, ignored her “repeated protests and pleas for the confrontation to stop” and her requests “for the conversation to not take place in a public company bathroom with others coming in and out to use the facilities as she was being questioned.” Such allegations of a “physically threatening” and “humiliating” incident in the workplace are sufficient to allege an objective belief in a developing retaliatory hostile work environment.
Finally, she has sufficiently alleged that the unwelcome conduct as to the bathroom incident was imputable to 95 Percent. Generally, conduct by a supervisor is imputable to the employer. See, e.g., Boyer-Liberto, 786 F.3d at 278 (discussing liability in context of both co-worker and supervisor). Ms. Whiteman and Ms. Wetter were Ms. Joyner’s immediate and second-line supervisors, respectively, and they allegedly cornered and “harangued” her in the bathroom of 95 Percent’s headquarters during a company-wide conference such that their conduct is imputable to 95 Percent. Accordingly, Ms. Joyner has sufficiently alleged that her complaints about the allegedly hostile work environment, beginning in late 2022 and culminating in her report to Human Resources in October 2023, constitute protected activity as to the first element of her retaliation claim in Count II.
(Cleaned up; citations omitted.)
The court proceeded to explain its conclusion that plaintiff establish the remaining elements, specifically, materially adverse action and causation.
As to the adverse action element, the court noted, among other things, the fact that plaintiff received a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) simply because she requested an internal investigation into suspected instances of discrimination and retaliation might have dissuaded a reasonable worker from requesting such an investigation in the first place.