Help

BI’s Article search uses Boolean search capabilities. If you are not familiar with these principles, here are some quick tips.

To search specifically for more than one word, put the search term in quotation marks. For example, “workers compensation”. This will limit your search to that combination of words.

To search for a combination of terms, use quotations and the & symbol. For example, “hurricane” & “loss”.

Login Register Subscribe

Dismissal of racial bias case involving nooses upheld

Reprints
Dismissal of racial bias case involving nooses upheld

Nooses in the workplace are “morally reprehensible” but do not necessarily create a hostile work environment under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, says a federal appeals court in upholding dismissal of a discrimination case and stating the employer had acted appropriately in its response.

Plaintiffs allege that between 1999 and 2016, African-American dockworkers at Overland Park, Kansas-based YRC Inc. encountered nooses, racist graffiti and other incidents in the workplace, according to Thursday’s ruling by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans in Bernis Tolliver v. YRC Inc., doing business as YRC Freight.

They had charged in their litigation that they had been subjected to a hostile work environment because of their race and retaliated against for complaining about racial harassment, according to court papers.

The question “is whether two incidents where unknown persons left a noose in YRC facilities, and one incident where someone wrote racist graffiti on a YRC truck is enough to create a hostile work environment,” said the unanimous ruling by a three-judge appeals court panel, in upholding a decision by the U.S. District Court in Dallas.

“Such conduct is undoubtedly highly reprehensible. However, Title VII is not the same thing as a code of conduct and does not reach all action that ordinary employees should deem appropriate and worthy of discipline,” said the ruling.

“Under our precedent, these events were not ‘sufficiently severe or pervasive,’ particularly where Plaintiffs did not contend that the acts were directed at them and for the most part learned about the acts secondhand,” it said.

Furthermore, even if the incidents were sufficiently severe, “YRC took the sort of prompt remedial action the law requires, including offering $25,000 for information on the perpetrators, interviewing hundreds of employees, reporting the incidents to law enforcement, hiring more security guards, and giving weekly reminders about YRC’s discrimination policies.”

The opinion concludes: “Although YRC did not discipline anyone, that is because the perpetrators remain unknown. Plaintiffs raise no fact issue to the contrary,” said the ruling, in upholding the lower court’s summary judgment in the case.

In 2014, an appeals court upheld a $243,000 jury award to two former African-American trucking company employees who were subjected to racial harassment that included presentation of nooses and confederate flags. 

 

Read Next