After a five-year legal battle waged against her employer, the city of Baltimore, a female electrician who claimed she had to work in an environment punctuated with dirty pictures and profanity is set to wrap up the case.
Harris appealed the decision and, setting the stage for the settlement, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in May reversed the lower court's decision regarding a hostile work environment.Regarding the photographs, Gauvey said they too were not directed at Harris and were not enough to demonstrate discrimination."Harris could not help but view these images on a daily basis," Duncan wrote in the May opinion. "And even after instructed by the City's EEO to remove the offending pictures, a shop supervisor did not comply and was suspended."According to court records, Harris was repeatedly exposed to explicit language and was referred to as a "bitch" by her co- workers, who were not reprimanded. She also claimed that offensive language and descriptions of women and sexual acts were commonplace.The Baltimore Board of Estimates will vote Wednesday to approve the $200,000 payout to settle the September 2006 lawsuit brought by Lynette Harris against the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore. Harris, a 23-year employee of the city's Department of Public Works, will get $65,000 of the settlement and the remaining $135,000 will go toward legal fees and expenses.Gauvey said the "locker room" talk in the shop was objectionable, but there were only two specific instances where the explicit language was directed at Harris, and she made no claims of unwanted physical contact."The new, heightened standard the district court created not only is contrary to the law; it is overly burdensome and defies common sense, as well as the years of practical experience that the EEOC and federal courts have evaluating hostile environment cases," the groups wrote in the brief.In 2008, U.S. Magistrate Judge Susan K. Gauvey granted summary judgment to the city on all counts, including hostile work environment and negligent supervision, except one dealing with why Harris had not been promoted. The court then ruled in favor of the city on that count the following year.Baltimore City Solicitor George A. Nilson, whose office handled the original trial and the appeal, said the settlement includes a mutual non-disparagement clause and he declined to comment on the specifics of the case."As to Harris' complaints about pictures of partially clothed or nude women in the workplace, she offers no fact nor reason to believe that the photographs and pictures were aimed at her to embarrass or humiliate her," Gauvey wrote in the order granting summary judgment. "Some courts find such sexually explicit pictures if directed to the plaintiff, actionable sex harassment, but only if directed at her.""Although conduct need not be physical to be 'severe,' in its absence courts have required an extreme level of verbal inappropriateness directed specifically at the plaintiff, which Harris has simply failed to demonstrate," Gauvey wrote.The criticism of the lower court ruling was that a reasonable jury could have found the harassment in the workplace to be severe or pervasive if it went to trial. 4th Circuit Judge Allyson K. Duncan wrote in the May 6 opinion that, looking at the evidence in favor of Harris, a claim for hostile workplace could be made.The groups monitoring the case said the lower court's ruling, if left standing, could have made it too difficult for some victims to prove harassment or prevented them from filing hostile workplace complaints."It was an overly strict standard that would have precluded a lot of legitimate claims of sexual harassment," ACLU of Maryland Legal Director Deborah Jeon said. "It was clear to the court that reasonable jurors could see that a reasonable claim of harassment could have been made in this case."Harris alleged that the workplace was strewn with a number of provocative photos of women either scantily clad or fully naked. Harris was also excluded from daily safety meetings her boss held with other workers and had to sit at a table in the shop that had explicit photos of women underneath the glass, she claimed.Harris' case attracted a lot of attention from civil rights organizations. The American Civil Liberties Union, the Anti- Defamation League, the National Association for Girls and Women in Sport and the National Women's Law Center were just some of the organizations that signed an amicus brief asking the 4th Circuit to overturn the lower court's decision. A lot of the criticism of the lower court's decision dealt with what was seen as a change to the standard of what makes a hostile workplace.Nilson said the 4th Circuit's decision and some other cases coming out of that court seemed to indicate the standard used in sexual discrimination cases was changing."Generally speaking, that area of law used to be quite favorable to employers," Nilson said. "Some people would say the law was too restrictive and it was difficult to make those cases.Joyce E. Smithey, with Rifkin, Livingston, Levitan & Silver LLC's Annapolis office, is one of the lawyers representing Harris. Citing the confidentiality agreement, Smithey declined to comment on the case."And, now, I'd say the law in the appellate courts, the 4th Circuit, has gotten more favorable for those bringing these kinds of cases," he added. "As lawyers, when we see new standards coming out of the appeals courts, we respond to them and sometimes that leads to settlements."
"And, now, I'd say the law in the appellate courts, the 4th Circuit, has gotten more favorable for those bringing these kinds of cases," he added. "As lawyers, when we see new standards coming out of the appeals courts, we respond to them and sometimes that leads to settlements."
Author: Ben Mook
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