Brown v. Henderson

• Decision Date: 01 August 2000
• Docket Number: No. 00-6347,00-6347
• Citation: 257 F.3d 246
• Parties: (2nd Cir. 2001) MADELINE E. BROWN, Plaintiff Appellant, v. WILLIAM J. HENDERSON, Postmaster General of the United States Postal Service, Defendant Appellee,
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

Page 246

257 F.3d 246 (2nd Cir. 2001)

MADELINE E. BROWN, PlaintiffAppellant, v.WILLIAM J. HENDERSON, Postmaster General of the United States Postal Service, DefendantAppellee,

No. 00-6347.

August Term, 2000.

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS SECOND CIRCUIT.

Argued: May 29, 2001.

Decided: July 24, 2001.

Appeal from an order, and subsequent judgment, of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York(Victor Marrero, Judge) granting defendant's motion for summary judgment and dismissing plaintiff's claims of sex discrimination in employment.

AFFIRMED.

[Copyrighted Material Omitted]

[Copyrighted Material Omitted]KEVIN P. QUILL, Long Island City, NY, for Plaintiff-Appellant.

RAMON E. REYES, JR., Assistant United States Attorney, for Mary Jo White, United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York(Jeffrey S. Oestericher, Assistant United States Attorney, on the brief), for Defendant-Appellee.

Before: CALABRESI and KATZMANN, Circuit Judges, and KAPLAN,^*District Judge.

CALABRESI, Circuit Judge:

Plaintiff-appellantMadeline E. Brown, a letter carrier for the United States Postal Service (the "Postal Service")¹, was harassed by her co-workers in their Manhattan workplace.The question on appeal is whether this harassment occurred because of Brown's sex, so as to bring it within the ambit of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,42 U.S.C. §2000e-1 et seq.The district court concluded that, as a matter of law, it did not.We agree, though on narrower grounds.

Background

Brown claims that she was subjected to sex discrimination in employment by virtue of a campaign of harassment that originated in a bitterly contested 1995 union election.In that election, plaintiff's chief antagonist was Thomas Nelson, who, with others, succeeded in ousting Brown from her post as union shop steward, a position she had held for eighteen years.The conflict between Brown and Nelson had begun just before the election when Brown criticized Nelson for repeatedly arriving hours late to work.

Plaintiff alleges that the "low and vicious... campaign of rumors and slander" continued beyond the conclusion of the election.In particular, Nelson frequently mocked Brown for being "a slob," for being overweight, and for certain modifications in her duties which resulted from an injury that she had suffered earlier.He accused her of spreading lies about him and "sa[ying] a lot of hostile stuff about the union which really wasn't sexually harassing; very hostile and very angry."Nelson also made fun of a purported romance, denied by Brown, between her and a married co-worker, Timothy "Tiny" Parrett.In this respect, Nelson and a group of co-workers habitually engaged in public speculation about the nature of Brown's and Parrett's relationship, teasing both of them for being lovers and for spending weekends together, and adding insulting references to the weight of both Parrett and Brown.

According to Brown, the bulk of the conduct focusing on her relationship with Parrett occurred in conversations, outside her presence, between the harassers and Parrett.This was facilitated by the proximity of Parrett's mail route to those of Nelson and the other antagonists.Even before the union election, Parrett himself had, for a long time, faced a pattern of workplace "needling" about his weight and "anything they can think of."

In addition to Nelson, plaintiff identified several other co-workers as contributing to the harassment, primarily by joining in the speculation about her relationship with Parrett.She also complained that, because she was stationed next to co-workers who engaged in a steady stream of obscene conversation, she necessarily overhead their "vile" talk, though they never referred to her directly or attempted to pressure her into participating in their conversations.When she objected, however, they became abusive and mocked Brown's weight and eating habits.

Besides this verbal harassment, Brown mentions two incidents in which she was graphically caricatured.In the first, a magazine picture of a naked, obese woman masturbating was posted near Parrett's mail route and captioned "Tiny's Girl."After Brown removed the picture, another image was placed in the same spot, this one showing two elephants mating above the words "Tiny and Mary Lou."²Within days of this event, Postal Service supervisors held a series of "service talks" on sexual harassment; these included specific instructions against the posting of any obscene pictures.Brown alleges that her co-workers harassed her for instigating these service talks, and that her supervisors neither took her complaints seriously nor acted aggressively to suppress future harassment.Thus, although no more pictures were placed in the work area, about six months after the talks there was another incident involving a sexually explicit cartoon of Brown.In this one, a vulgar picture was drawn in a men's bathroom, though not one regularly used by Parrett.

In her complaint to the Postal Service's Equal Employment Opportunity ("EEO") office, which she filed after the "Tiny's Girl" incident but before the bathroom graffiti, Brown made clear that her "first and foremost" complaint about her workplace was the verbal harassment by Nelson and his cohort.In the midst of a full account of "why Nelson and his friends hated me so much," Brown also explained that management disliked her because of her conscientious advocacy as shop steward.And she went on to recount how her conflict with Nelson began with their clash over his working hours and evolved into the disputed union election.Significantly, nowhere in her detailed statement did she allege, either explicitly or implicitly, that any hostile actions were taken because of her sex.Again, in an affidavit supplementing her EEO complaint, plaintiff explained that "I am proud to say that I was a very good steward.I won a lot of grievances, helped a lot of people, and saved quite a few jobs.For this, more than anything else, Nelson and his friends envied and hated me and tried to make me less than human."And in her deposition after this suit was filed, Brown once more emphasized that her dispute with Nelson was the sole cause of the hostility toward her:

I believe that the reason - the original reason for Mr. Nelson's behavior and the harassment I was suffering had to do with my time as a shop steward....And I believe that Mr. Nelson for various reasons if it hadn't been for the election and all of that unpleasantness and [if I hadn't] told him that people were talking about him showing up three or four hours late this probably would not have happened.And I still believe that.

Only after defendant moved for summary judgment did plaintiff submit an affidavit alleging that the workplace abuse was "gender[ed] in nature and attacked me because I am a woman."Up to that point, her explanation of what rendered the conduct at issue sexual harassment centered exclusively on the fact that some of it concerned sexual acts, possessed sexual connotations, or related to the purported sexual relationship between her and Parrett.

When the Postal Service found no merit in plaintiff's administrative complaint, Brown brought suit in district court, alleging both sex discrimination by virtue of a hostile work environment and retaliation for her complaints.Once discovery had been completed, defendant moved for summary judgment on a number of grounds, and the district court granted the motion.

The district court's reasons for granting summary judgment centered on deficiencies in plaintiff's proof that the harassment she experienced was "because of sex," as is required for there to be Title VII liability.SeeBrown v. Henderson, 115 F. Supp.2d 445, 450-51(S.D.N.Y.2000).In particular, the court focused on the fact that both Brown and Parrett experienced workplace harassment, and that much of the verbal commentaries, as well as the graphic depictions of Brown, had Parrett, not Brown, as their most immediate audience.Based on these considerations, together with the evidence that the conduct at issue stemmed from the union election, the court concluded that Brown's allegations amounted to no more than the charge that she happened to be a female victim of "equal opportunity harassment," and not, as required for Title VII liability, someone who experienced workplace harassment because of her sex.The court also ruled that, to the extent her complaint could be read to allege retaliatory harassment, this claim was barred by the Postal Service's prompt remedial action.On appeal, Brown challenges only the district court's judgment with regard to her sex discrimination claim and does not press her retaliation claim.

Discussion

I.Summary Judgment Standard

We review de novo the district court's grant of summary judgment.Distasio v. Perkin Elmer Corp., 157 F.3d 55, 61(2d Cir.1998).To prevail on its summary judgment motion, the moving party must show that "there is no genuine issue as to any material fact" and that it "is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law."Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(c).In applying this standard, we"resolve all ambiguities, and credit all factual inferences that could rationally be drawn, in favor of the party opposing summary judgment."Cifra v. General Electric Co., 252 F.3d 205, 216(2d Cir.2001).In discrimination cases, the inquiry into whether the plaintiff's sex (or race, etc.) caused the conduct at issue often requires an assessment of individuals' motivations and state of mind, matters that call for a "sparing" use of the summary judgment device because of juries' special advantages over judges in this area.Distasio, 157 F.3d at 61;accordGallagher v. Delaney, 139 F.3d 338, 342(2d Cir.1998)(noting juries' possession of the "current real life experience required in interpreting subtle sexual dynamics of the workplace based on nuances, subtle perceptions, and implicit communications")...