Beckford v. Dep't Of Corr.

Decision Date07 May 2010
Docket Number09-14903.,No. 09-11540,09-11540
Citation605 F.3d 951
PartiesMelanie BECKFORD, Charlene Fontneau, Tita De La Cruz, Lee Wascher, Linda Jones, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees,v.DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, Defendant-Appellant.Melanie Beckford, Charlene Fontneau, Tita De La Cruz, Lee Wascher, Linda Jones, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees,v.Department of Corrections, State of Florida, Defendants-Appellants.
CourtU.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Carri S. Leininger, Williams Leininger & Cosby, P.A., West Palm Beach, FL, for Dept. of Corrs.

John C. Davis, Law Office of John C. Davis, Tallahassee, FL, for Plaintiffs-Appellees.

Appeals from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

Before PRYOR and FAY, Circuit Judges, and QUIST,* District Judge.

PRYOR, Circuit Judge:

This appeal presents the question whether the Florida Department of Corrections can be liable, under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, for failing to remedy a sexually hostile work environment that male inmates created for female employees at Martin Correctional Institution. See 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a)(1). Melanie Beckford and 13 other women, all former non-security employees at Martin, complained that the Department failed to remedy sexually offensive conduct of inmates, including the frequent use of gender-specific abusive language and pervasive “gunning,” the notorious practice of inmates openly masturbating toward female staff. At trial, a jury heard evidence of this harassment, considered the ability of the Department to mitigate the misconduct, and held the Department liable. On appeal, the Department presents four arguments: (1) the Department, as a matter of law, cannot be liable under Title VII unless its staff actively encouraged or participated in the harassment; (2) the female employees failed to prove that the inmates' harassment was because of sex; (3) the district court should have instructed the jury about the affirmative defense recognized in Faragher v. City of Boca Raton, 524 U.S. 775, 807-08, 118 S.Ct. 2275, 2292-93, 141 L.Ed.2d 662 (1998); and (4) the district court should have severed the employees' claims under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 42(b). We conclude that the jury was entitled to find the Department liable under Title VII because it unreasonably failed to remedy the sexual harassment by its inmates. We also reject the other arguments of the Department and affirm.

I. BACKGROUND

Beckford and the 13 other former employees worked at Martin between 1999 and 2002. Beckford, Susan Black, Tita De la Cruz, Charlene Fontneau, Linda Jones, Paula LaCroix, Joyce Meyer, Donna Pixley, Vesna Poirier, Michelle Pollock, Lourdes Silvagnoli, and Lee Wascher worked as nurses; Sushma Parekh worked as a physician; and Janet Smith worked as a classification officer. Each of the female employees worked in the “close management” housing dorms at Martin. The nurses entered the close management dorms each day to pass medication to inmates, answer sick calls, and respond to medical emergencies. The other former employees entered the close management dorms at least several times each week to perform similar duties or to discuss administrative matters with inmates.

According to James Upchurch, the director of security operations for the Department the close management dorms house inmates who “have demonstrated by their behavior and the pattern of their behavior that they can't be left in the general population because they pose too great a threat” to other inmates and staff. Martin houses close management inmates in several separate dorms. Each dorm comprises four quads, which contain individual inmate cells. Each single cell contains a bunk, sink, and toilet and has a solid door with a glass window. Each cell door contains a slot through which prison staff pass medication and food. Each close management dorm also contains a glass control room or bubble that sits in the middle of the dorm and provides staff a view of the quads. From the bubbles, staff can view each cell in a dorm.

While the women were employed at Martin, the close management inmates abused staff, especially female staff. David Harris, who served as assistant warden at Martin during the 1990s, testified that close management “inmates would throw urine, throw feces on [male security] staff.” Sergeant Brian McDew, who worked as a corrections officer at Martin during the same period, testified that this behavior toward male staff did not happen “very often, but it happen [ed].” According to the testimony of the female employees, the inmates reacted especially poorly to the presence of female staff in the close management dorms. When the inmates saw female employees approaching one of the close management dorms, the inmates called the employees names-including cunt, whore, slut, and bitch-through the exterior cell windows and explained, in graphic detail, the sexual liberties that the inmates would take with the employees, if given the opportunity.

The inmates often instructed each other to “lock and load” when they saw female staff approaching one of the dorms. The inmates' phrase “lock and load” referred to the most notorious conduct to which they exposed the female staff: gunning. That conduct involved exposing themselves and masturbating directly at staff.

The female employees testified to similar experiences. They testified that inmates gunned them from the inmates' cells while the female employees were waiting in the close management dorm bubbles before working in the quads. To harass the women waiting in the bubbles, the inmates would stand, a nurse testified, “at their windows, hanging off the door jambs, standing on the toilets, on rolled up mattresses” so that the female employees could see the inmates gunning through the cell windows. The inmates often would ejaculate on the cell windows and through the food slot or flap on the cell door, sometimes when female staff were standing at the door. The inmates masturbated when the female employees were completing paperwork in the dorms, and when the women saw inmates in the isolation room in the medical building.

The inmates also gunned the female employees when the women responded to medical emergencies in the close management dorms. Nurse Poirier testified that “99.9 percent of the time the emergencies were bogus. It was just for me to get down there for [the inmates] to have the entertainment for the evening.” Nurse Fontneau explained that the inmates faked emergencies and they “call[ed] because it was like hiring a call girl or a whore.” Nurse Pixley recalled an incident in which a male nurse responded to an emergency in a close management dorm. She testified that the male nurse “was back within five minutes because ... the inmate cussed him out and said that he didn't need medical.... [The inmate] asked him where is the female nurse.”

Each of the female employees testified about her own humiliating experiences with gunning. Nurse Meyer, for example, recalled being abandoned by a male security employee, Lieutenant Ferguson, while she was delivering medication in a close management dorm. When Nurse Meyer was alone, “the inmates in the quad all started to scream and bang on the doors.” [T]hey were hanging onto the door frames above the door and they were on their toilet and they were all masturbating.” Nurse Meyer estimated that “it was probably 15 inmates that they were ejaculating and everything on the windows.” Lieutenant Ferguson “totally ignored” Nurse Meyer's calls for help, and when she confronted him later about the episode, he said, [Y]ou were looking for it. I saw you, you were looking for it. You were asking for it.’ Nurse Meyer was scheduled to leave the Department at the end of that day, but she quit on the spot.

Gunning was a frequent phenomenon. At trial, the female employees estimated that when they were in the close management dorms, virtually “every one of” the inmates gunned. Nurse Beckford testified that the inmates used a “team effort” for gunning the female employees, and Nurse Jones described the inmates' behavior as a “chain reaction.” The employees also presented evidence that virtually all the inmates participated in the misconduct and the inmates gunned only female staff, not the all-male security staff.

The female employees attempted to limit their exposure to inmate gunning. The employees tried to place screens in front of the windows of the isolation rooms and suggested papering cell door windows, but security personnel did not permit those measures. The employees also suggested two-way mirrors for the nursing stations, but management rejected that idea as too expensive. The employees suggested that inmates be brought to the medical building so that the employees would not have to visit the dorms or that inmates be brought to a separate room in the close management dorms, but prison officials determined that staff shortages prevented these measures. The employees also suggested the use of pink uniforms to shame repeat gunners. Some of the employees wore baggy clothes; neck towels to disguise sweat, which inmates enjoyed seeing; sunglasses to avoid eye contact with inmates; and headphones to avoid the verbal harassment. It is unclear how successful these last measures were, as they sometimes generated additional harassment.

The female employees complained to prison management, including the warden, about the conduct of the inmates. The employees testified that they filed disciplinary reports regarding inmate harassment, including gunning. Several female employees testified that management ordinarily ignored these complaints. Captain Wiles, for example, once informed a complaining nurse that the inmates were in “their living room and they could do whatever they wanted.” Male employees encouraged the female employees to accept the gunning “as a compliment.” Other female employees testified that prison officials sometimes punished inmates in...

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