In Spicer v. J. Steven Sheldon et al, No. 1:25-CV-00029, 2026 WL 2920290 (N.D. Ohio Sept. 29, 2026), the court, inter alia, granted defendants’ motion for summary judgment on plaintiff’s hostile work environment claim asserted under Title VII of the Civil Rights At of 1964.
From the decision:
Spicer suggests that Captain Sweat targets female employees with this attitude because most of Captain Sweat’s subordinates are female, and Schuller observed that he often took this condescending tone with his subordinates. But in the same breath, Schuller denied that Captain Sweat did so because of his subordinates’ gender. Instead, Schuller thought that “it’s just more his personality of…how he is. His makeup, if you will.” Elsewhere, Schuller explained that “[Captain Sweat]’s not picking on individuals. It’s just how he talks to people[.]” And significantly, Captain Sweat acted this way towards Schuller, a male employee. The most this evidence shows is that Captain Sweat was abrasive to everyone below him in rank, not that he was biased against female employees.
In any case, even if it were clear that Captain Sweat was condescending only to female employees, that would still not rise to the level of a hostile work environment. Only harassment that is “sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of [ ] employment” can create a hostile work environment. Williams, 643 F.3d at 512 (quoting Harris v. Forklift Sys., Inc., 510 U.S. 17, 21, 114 S. Ct. 367, 126 L. Ed. 2d 295 (1993)). Title VII is not a “code of workplace civility,” so “[o]ccasional offensive utterances do not rise to the level required to create a hostile work environment.” Captain Sweat’s condescending tone combined with discrete instances of criticizing Spicer’s work in a disrespectful way does not rise to the level of a hostile work environment under this approach.
(Citations omitted.)
In reaching this conclusion, the court cited case law in which the court determined that “constant interactions in condescending and intimidating tones” coupled with “regular ridicule and negative comments” did “not rise to the level of sufficient severity to have created a hostile work environment.”