In Butler v. Ford Motor Company, 2022 WL 4448724 (N.D.Ill. Sept. 23, 2022), the court dismissed plaintiff’s hostile work environment sexual harassment claim.
In sum, plaintiff alleges that her co-worker yelled in her face, “You bitches on this line be tweaking!”.
This decision teaches that not every utterance of an offensive, sex-based term will give rise to an actionable claim.
The court explained:
Here, the Court finds that, even accepting the allegations in the Complaint as true, as it must, Butler has failed to allege that the harassment was severe or pervasive. In considering the totality of the circumstances, see Kibbons, 563 F. Supp. 3d 798 at 807, Butler has alleged that Malloy’s harassment was physically threatening and humiliating. See Resp. at 6; Compl. ¶¶ 28–30, 46. However, the Complaint also indicates that Malloy’s conduct was limited to one incident, and that the only term that could be tied to Butler’s sex was the term “bitches.” Id. ¶¶ 27–29. While undoubtedly an offensive and odious term, its use once is not “sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of employment such that it create[d] an abusive working environment.” Scruggs v. Garst Seed Co., 587 F.3d 832, 840 (7th Cir. 2009) (citation omitted).
Butler argues that the conduct was severe enough because it unreasonably interfered with her job performance, in that she was terminated approximately a week after her altercation with Malloy. Resp. at 6. But the Court agrees with Ford, see R. 18, Reply at 2, that Butler misconstrues the meaning of a hostile work environment. An allegation that she was later terminated is not the same as an allegation that Butler was subjected to a hostile work environment while she was employed at Ford. As a court in this Circuit has explained, “a hostile work environment claim focuses on the conditions of employment and the environment an employee is subject to, not the consequences an employee faced. Those consequences more properly form the basis of [a plaintiff’s] retaliation and discrimination claim, not [a] hostile work environment claim.” Kane v. Finance of America Reverse, LLC, No. 1:17-cv-02266, 2018 WL 2001810, at *6 (S.D. Ind. April 30, 2018). Here, Butler alleges that she continued working right after the altercation with Malloy, and she has not alleged (other than boilerplate legal conclusions that the Court need not accept as true, see, e.g., Compl. ¶¶ 44, 45, 84, 86, 125), that that she was unable to perform her work duties as a result of Malloy’s conduct. Thus, in short, Butler fails to allege that Malloy’s one-off conduct was sufficiently severe or pervasive to support her sexual harassment claim.
The court additionally dismissed plaintiff’s common-law claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress, finding that that claim was preempted by the Illinois Worker’s Compensation Act.