In Bates v. Leviton Manufacturing Co., Inc., No. 3:24-CV-01414, 2026 WL 2211556 (M.D. Tenn. July 31, 2026), the court, inter alia, granted defendant’s motion for summary judgment on plaintiff’s claim of race-based hostile work environment asserted under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Among other allegations was that another employee told plaintiff (who is black) that her direct supervisor (who is white) was “talking bad” about her during a meeting and had called her a “slave”.
From the decision:
Courts, indeed, recognize that a single instance of extremely serious harassment may be sufficient to create a hostile work environment. Ault v. Oberlin Coll., 620 F. App’x 395, 402 (6th Cir. 2015) (quoting Hickman v. Laskodi, 45 F. App’x 451, 456 (6th Cir. 2002)). Such conduct, however, typically involves threats of bodily harm, see, e.g., Hickman, 45 F. App’x at 454–55 (denying motion to dismiss), or extremely offensive touching, see, e.g., Ault, 620 F. App’x at 403 (finding a jury question as to whether the defendant’s physical assault of the plaintiff was “sufficiently severe by itself” to create a hostile work environment where the defendant supervisor shoved the plaintiff against shelves in a walk-in cooler, rubbed his genitals against her, and held her in place despite demands that he stop); Kalich v. AT & T Mobility, LLC, 679 F.3d 464, 474 (6th Cir. 2012) (recognizing that “extreme incidents such as rape or sexual assault” may create a hostile work environment).
On the other hand, it is well established that mere offensive utterances as opposed to physically threatening or humiliating conduct are not enough to create a hostile working environment within the meaning of Harris. Crawford v. Medina Gen. Hosp., 96 F.3d 830, 836 (6th Cir. 1996); accord Williams, 643 F.3d at 512–13 (“Occasional offensive utterances do not rise to the level required to create a hostile work environment. ‘To hold otherwise would risk changing Title VII into a code of workplace civility, a result we have previously rejected.’ ” (quoting Grace v. USCAR, 521 F.3d 655, 679 (6th Cir. 2008)). In Williams, for example, a supervisor allegedly “call[ed] Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton ‘monkeys’ and sa[id] that black people should ‘go back to where [they] came from,’ ” but the court found this comment, along with a few other isolated comments, insufficient to create a hostile work environment.
For purposes of ruling on the defendant’s summary judgment motion, the court accepts as true that another employee told Bates that Montgomery had called her a slave (even though the court does not accept the truth of what the other employee told Bates). And the plaintiff’s hearing this statement could reasonably upset her. However, this single incident of what amounts to a rumor is not sufficient, standing alone, to create a hostile work environment. Even if the court considers the “slave” allegation in the context of the plaintiff’s other allegations, none of her other allegations of workplace tribulations relates to race, and she simply has not presented evidence that her workplace was, objectively, permeated with severe or pervasive harassment based on race. At most, her allegations reflect “ ‘[m]ere disrespect or antipathy’ indicative of interpersonal conflict rather than identity-based hostility.” Leath, 2026 WL 228827, at *6 (quoting Johnson v. Ford Motor Co., 13 F.4th 493, 505 (6th Cir. 2021)); see also Khalaf v. Ford Motor Co., 973 F.3d 469, 484 (6th Cir. 2020) (reversing judgment for the plaintiff where the comments about which the plaintiff complained, though arguably disrespectful and offensive, were not related to the plaintiff’s origin or ethnicity as required for him to prove a hostile work environment, emphasizing that Title VII does not prohibit all verbal or physical harassment in the work place; it is directed only at discrimination because of’ protected characteristics under the statutes”
(Cleaned up.)
Accordingly, the court determined that defendant was entitled to summary judgment on plaintiff’s hostile work environment claim.