RPJ's Ethan Krasnoo Discusses Eleventh Circuit Decision Expanding Hostile Work Environment Claims

A recent decision from the 11^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals could expand the types of workplace conduct that support legal liability. In a split ruling, the Eleventh Circuit reinstated the claims brought by the only nonwhite employee at a Florida commercial trucking company who alleged he was subjected to a racially hostile work environment and retaliation. While the district court dismissed claims of unfair termination and retaliation, the appellate court revived the employee's hostile work environment claim, allowing it to proceed to trial.

In this case, the plaintiff alleged that supervisors and coworkers routinely made derogatory remarks about nonwhite customers. Although many of the comments were not directed specifically at the employee, the Eleventh Circuit found that such conduct could still support a hostile work environment claim by the plaintiff.

In a recent article titled What to Know About Evolving Hostile Workplace Liability, RPJ attorney Ethan Krasnoo was quoted on the evolving legal understanding of how workplace bias operates. While articulating that is the 11^th Circuit case opinion does not create a “categorical rule to be applied to all claims” of hostile work environment, Krasnoo stated that this case “will become a citation goldmine” in “situations where a claimant alleging a hostile work environment seeks to support their claim about mistreatment” through showing widespread mistreatment of others “in similar but distinct protected classes.”

Krasnoo notes that in the past, courts have traditionally recognized that evidence of mistreatment directed at other individuals who share protected characteristics with a plaintiff may help establish the existence of a hostile work environment. However, he noted that in this case, the court “expanded the scope to look to mistreatment not necessarily of individuals with the same racial makeup — for example, a Black employee pointing to mistreatment of other Black individuals — but rather to mistreatment … within the broader category of nonwhite individuals.”

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