Muhammad v. Caterpillar, Inc., 12–1723.
| Decision Date | 09 September 2014 |
| Docket Number | No. 12–1723.,12–1723. |
| Citation | 767 F.3d 694 |
| Parties | Warnether A. MUHAMMAD, Plaintiff–Appellant, v. CATERPILLAR, INC., Defendant–Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
Donald R. Jackson, Peoria, IL, for Plaintiff–Appellant.
Jason M. Torres, Joseph S. Turner, Seyfarth Shaw LLP, Chicago, IL, for Defendant–Appellee.
Before EASTERBROOK, ROVNER, and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges.
Warnether Muhammad alleges that his coworkers at Caterpillar, Inc., created a hostile work environment by subjecting him to sexual and racial harassment and that his supervisor retaliated by suspending him after he complained about it. Upon receiving a right-to-sue letter from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Muhammad sued Caterpillar under Title VII. The district court granted summary judgment for Caterpillar. Because the company reasonably responded to the complaints of harassment, and no evidence suggests that Caterpillar suspended Muhammad because he complained, we affirm the judgment.
We recite the facts in the record in the light most favorable to Muhammad. See Cannon v. Burge, 752 F.3d 1079, 1088 (7th Cir.2014). In 2006, after some of Muhammad's coworkers made offensive comments, both orally and in writing, about his race and his perceived sexual orientation, Muhammad complained to management, and the company responded.
The offensive oral comments occurred over the course of several months and came from three different employees. In the first incident, a coworker called Muhammad a “black nigger.” Muhammad complained to human resources. After the complaint, that employee never made any further racial comments to Muhammad. A different coworker stated that he did not like Muhammad's “black faggot ass,” and Muhammad reported the statement to his supervisor, Kipp Edwards, who brought the complaint to human resources. Muhammad had no subsequent problems with that employee. Finally, yet another employee told Muhammad that her grandchildren are black, that she does not like them or black people generally, and that she wished her daughter had dated a white man. Edwards brought that complaint to human resources as well. The next month, the same employee commented to Muhammad that “his black butt should have stayed fired,” but Muhammad never reported this single, additional incident to Caterpillar.
The company also responded to offensive comments that were scrawled on the walls of the bathroom nearest Muhammad's workstation in August 2006. The vandal (or vandals) wrote that Muhammad “is a fag, a know it all fag,” that he “sucks Kippy dick” (an apparent reference to his supervisor Kipp Edwards), that he has AIDS, and that he is a “black nigger” who “should be killed.” Muhammad reported the graffiti to Edwards on August 11. Edwards contacted the shift supervisor, Brad Johnson, and the labor relations representative, Melissa Schwoerer, and he immediately contacted Nu–Air—a third-party provider of painting services—to have the graffiti painted over. Similar graffiti reappeared on August 14, and Muhammad spoke with Edwards and also discussed the matter with Johnson directly who was present at the shift meeting. That evening, Edwards discussed with Muhammad that he should follow the chain of command in submitting complaints and should inform Edwards and then Edwards would communicate the information to Johnson. Edwards had Nu–Air repaint the walls again after that complaint.
Around that time (though we cannot tell precisely when), Edwards addressed the graffiti problem further by discussing it with all of Muhammad's coworkers at a shift meeting. When more graffiti appeared on August 30, Edwards once more had the walls repainted, and each person on Muhammad's line was individually warned that anyone caught defacing the walls would be fired immediately. No more graffiti appeared.
Roughly six weeks had passed when, on October 12, an incident occurred that resulted in Muhammad's suspension. On that day, Muhammad left his work station during a nonbreak time to use the restroom, and checked the bid board for postings before returning to his station. Edwards confronted Muhammad concerning his use of work time to check the bid board.
The facts are in dispute as to what happened next. Edwards contends that Muhammad responded with disrespectful comments, and walked away from Edwards when he was trying to discuss the matter. Muhammad asserts that he did not act in that manner, but also states that he did not want to engage in a discussion without a union representative present. It is undisputed that Edwards decided to indefinitely suspend Muhammad and that he walked Muhammad out of the plant at that time, allegedly for insubordination. Edwards had authority only to suspend employees pending the investigation of the alleged misconduct by the company. After that internal investigation, the suspension of Muhammad was deemed appropriate. Muhammad filed a grievance through his union representative and was allowed to return to work on November 2, 2006. He was later suspended a second time and then terminated based on his conduct with his coworkers upon his return. Following the settlement of his grievance of the termination, he returned to work at Caterpillar again in July 2008 with no back pay, and was laid off due to a reduction in force in April 2009. He was later rehired at Caterpillar where he remains employed.
Based on the incidents of August–October 2006, Muhammad filed his charges of harassment and retaliation with the EEOC, and in June 2009 he received his right-to-sue letter. Shortly thereafter he filed this suit, alleging that he was harassed with offensive comments about his perceived sexual orientation and his race and that Edwards suspended him in retaliation for reporting the offensive graffiti to the shift supervisor.
The district court granted summary judgment for Caterpillar. In rejecting the claim of sexual harassment, the court relied on our decision in Spearman v. Ford Motor Company, 231 F.3d 1080, 1085 (7th Cir.2000), which held that the Title VII prohibition on discrimination based on sex extended only to discrimination based on a person's gender, and not that aimed at a person's sexual orientation. The district court also ruled that Caterpillar was not liable for any racial harassment by coworkers because, in the court's view, the company's responses to Muhammad's complaints of harassment were reasonable. Finally, the court concluded that Muhammad lacked evidence that Edwards retaliated against him for complaining about the harassment.
On appeal, Muhammad argues that his coworkers' derogatory comments about sexual orientation were based on his sex. He asserts that his coworkers would not have directed their comments “towards a female in the workplace notwithstanding her sexual preferences” and that “[i]t is ... conceivable to believe that he was harassed because he was a male who did not, in the mind [sic] of his harassers, act like a male.”
A fundamental obstacle blocks Muhammad's claim that Caterpillar is liable for sexual and racial harassment: Caterpillar reasonably responded to Muhammad's complaints. See Berry v. Chicago Transit Auth., 618 F.3d 688, 692 (7th Cir.2010) () After Muhammad reported to Caterpillar his coworkers' offensive comments and the company responded, only one of the coworkers made another similar remark. But Muhammad never reported that isolated statement. “An employer is not liable for co-employee sexual harassment when a mechanism to report the harassment exists, but the victim fails to utilize it.” Durkin v. City of Chicago, 341 F.3d 606, 612–13 (7th Cir.2003) ; see also Montgomery v. American Airlines, Inc., 626 F.3d 382, 392 (7th Cir.2010) ().
As for the graffiti, Caterpillar responded quickly each time Muhammad reported it, and it soon stopped the problem permanently. The company engaged Nu–Air three times in August to paint over the offending comments; two of those times were within three days of each other. Muhammad's supervisor, Edwards, also addressed the graffiti problem at a shift meeting, and after the third repainting, each coworker on Muhammad's line was warned that Caterpillar would immediately fire any employee caught defacing the walls. Muhammad concedes that the graffiti never reappeared after that warning.
Even though the graffiti never resurfaced after the threat to terminate offenders, Muhammad insists that Caterpillar should have done more to identify who was responsible for the graffiti and to punish all coworkers who harassed him. But Title VII requires only that employers take action reasonably calculated to stop unlawful harassment; that requirement does not necessarily include disciplining the employees responsible for past conduct. See Porter v. Erie Foods Int'l, 576 F.3d 629, 637 (7th Cir.2009) (...
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