In Chandler v. La-Z-Boy, Inc., No. 5:21-cv-05101-JMG, 2022 WL 3357674 (E.D.Pa. Aug. 15, 2022), the court, inter alia, dismissed plaintiff’s race-based hostile work environment claim. Plaintiff based this claim (as well as her discrimination claim) on her manager allegedly referring to her as a “colored girl.”
The court explained:
A hostile work environment claim under Section 1981 is analyzed in the same manner as under Title VII.” Miller v. Thomas Jefferson Univ. Hosp., 908 F. Supp. 2d 639, 653 (E.D. Pa. 2012). “To succeed on a hostile work environment claim, a plaintiff must prove: (1) she suffered intentional discrimination on the basis of race; (2) the discrimination was severe or pervasive; (3) the discrimination detrimentally affected her; (4) the discrimination would have detrimentally affected a reasonable person in like circumstances; and (5) there is a basis for employer liability, such as respondeat superior.” Id. (citing Kunin v. Sears Roebuck & Co., 175 F.3d 289, 293 (3d Cir. 1999)).
Chandler’s hostile work environment claim is primarily rooted in the aforementioned “colored girl” comment. See, e.g., Am. Compl. ¶ 58. The comment is offensive, but “[i]solated incidents and offhanded comments … are not sufficient to sustain a hostile work environment claim.” Stucke v. City of Phila., 685 F. App’x 150, 153 (3d Cir. 2017) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). And “the fact that Plaintiff encountered an unpleasant isolated incident does not mean that the terms and conditions of Plaintiff’s employment were altered.” Hoff v. Spring House Tavern, No. 13-0662, 2013 WL 2434615, at *4 (E.D. Pa. June 5, 2013) (collecting cases); see also Canada v. Samuel Grossi & Sons, Inc., 476 F. Supp. 3d 42, 58 (E.D. Pa. 2020) (“For racist comments, slurs and jokes to constitute a hostile work environment, there must be more than a few isolated incidents of racial enmity[ ] ….” (internal quotation marks and citation omitted)). Standing alone, the comment is not sufficiently severe or pervasive to support a hostile work environment claim.
The taunts from Chandler’s colleagues also do not support her claim because those taunts, on their face, were not racially based, and there are no facts alleged that otherwise suggest that they were racially motivated. Cf. Mudie v. Phila. Coll. of Osteopathic Med., No. 21-2156-KSM, 2021 WL 6136937, at *4 (E.D. Pa. Dec. 29, 2021) (“[A]llegations … entirely untethered from … race … do not support a § 1981 claim.”); Barber v. A&J Hometown Oil, Inc., No. 11-cv-3350, 2012 WL 13049677, at *5 n.5 (S.D.N.Y. June 28, 2012) (“[C]omments unrelated to race or ethnicity cannot form the basis of a Section 1981 claim.”).
Based on this, the court held that plaintiff failed to allege a plausible hostile work environment claim.