On May 23, 2005, Plaintiff became the first and only female
warehouse employee to be employed by Defendant Acme Paper & Supply Company. She
was initially assigned to the receiving dock full-time. Over the next year,
Plaintiff's duties were reassigned several times until she received permanent
assignment to rotating jobs that included sweeping floors, straightening boxes
and pallets, taping boxes and emptying trash cans. The trash cans weighed
between thirty and fifty pounds.
On July 14, 2006, Plaintiff notified her employer that
she is pregnant and provided a physcian's note explaining that she should be
excused from lifting anything over ten to fifteen pounds until May 2007.
Accordingly, this would require an accommodation for her trash duty. When
Ms. Ward requested an accommodation, her employer responded by way of a July
26, 2008 memorandum stating that "it is the Company's policy to accommodate
any restrictions an employee may have due to work-related injuries."
See
Ward v. Acme Paper & Supply Co., Inc., No. CCB-08-3257, *3 (D. Md. August
12, 2010). As Plaintiff's pregnancy was not work-related, her employers
informed her that Acme would not accommodate her new restrictions. Plaintiff
was placed on leave and she received disability payments through her union.
Shortly after she told her employer she is pregnant,
one of her supervisors allegedly disseminated the information among Acme
employees. One of the employees approached other male colleagues and
congratulated them on being the father of Plaintiff's baby. Plaintiff
allegedly complained to her supervisors.
On November 6, 2006, Plaintiff filed a charge of
discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC").
She claimed that she was discriminated against based on her sex in violation
of Title VII, but the charge did not mention her co-workers' comments about
her pregnancy, comments regarding the father of her child, nor did it use
the terms harassment or hostile work environment. In early 2007, the
Plaintiff gave birth, and she resigned from her job. A year and a half later
on December 4, 2008, Plaintiff filed suit against Defendant Acme alleging
that the company discriminated against her based on her sex and subjected
her to a hostile work environment. Both parties moved for summary judgment.
Plaintiff alleges that Defendant Acme discriminated
against her on the basis of sex in violation of Title VII because Defendant
refused to accommodate her pregnancy-related weight lifting restriction.
Pregnancy discrimination is a form of discrimination on the basis of sex as
defined by 42 U.S.C. § 2000e(k). Defendant argued that it did not
intentionally discriminate against the Plaintiff. The company's policies
provide only general accommodations to work-related injuries. The company
argued that because it acted on a pregnancy-neutral policy of only
accommodating work-related injuries, it did not discriminate against the
Plaintiff when it declined to accommodate her weight lifting restriction
caused by her pregnancy.
Plaintiff countered that the company did not
consistently apply its policy of accommodating employees only with
work-related injuries. She pointed to deposition testimony of one supervisor
in which he stated that he would personally accommodate some employees who
incurred injuries unrelated to their work by giving them light duty
assignments. Also, discovery revealed that the company accommodated one
employee when he injured himself playing in a recreation soccer league by
reassigning him from inventory management to computer work.
The Court explained that if it were undisputed that the
company had established and consistently applied its pregnancy-neutral
policy of accommodating work-related injuries, then the Plaintiff's claim of
disparate treatment would fail. However, the record evidenced that the
company's application of its policy was a material fact in dispute.
Accordingly, this issue was not appropriate for summary judgment. The Court
denied both parties' Motions for Summary Sudgment as to the issue of
pregnancy discrimination.
The second issue was hostile work environment.
Plaintiff claimed that she was subjected to the hostile work environment
because co-workers made inappropriate and hostile remarks regarding the
identity of the father of her child. Defendant Acme argued that Plaintiff
failed to include her hostile work environment claim in her EEOC charge; and
therefore, she failed to exhaust her administrative remedies, thus
precluding her from raising the issue now in litigation.
Plaintiff argued that discrimination claims stated in
an initial EEOC charge and those that are reasonably related to the EEOC
charge may be maintained in a subsequent Title VII lawsuit. She argued that
her hostile work environment claim was reasonably related to her pregnancy
discrimination claim and that therefore, she should be considered to have
exhausted her administrative remedies.
The Court was not forced to decide whether her hostile
work environment claim was reasonably related to her pregnancy
discrimination claims. The Court explained that Plaintiff's claim would fail
regardless because the alleged hostile conduct was not sufficiently severe
and pervasive. To establish the claim for sexual harassment under Title VII,
Plaintiff must have established that "the offending conduct was (1)
unwelcome, (2) based on her sex, (3) sufficiently severe or pervasive to
alter the conditions of her employment and create an abusive work
environment, and (4) imputable to her employer."
See Ward, at *8 (internal
citations and quotations omitted).
The Court looked to various factors to assess "severe
and pervasive" such as the frequency of the discriminatory conduct, the
severity of the conduct, and whether the conduct was physically threatening,
humiliating, or mere offensive utterance, and whether it was unreasonably
interfering with the Plaintiff's work.
The Court explained that the Fourth Circuit had set a
high bar for plaintiffs with the severe and pervasive test. Complaints of
mere rude comments or callous behavior will not satisfy this test. Here,
Plaintiff's supervisor's decision to not accommodate the weight lifting
restriction was an isolated incident. Accordingly, it will not constitute
severe and pervasive conduct. Moreover, the Court found that her co-workers'
remarks immediately following the news of her pregnancy were isolated,
albeit rude and callous.
Based on the Court's findings that the misconduct was
not severe and pervasive, the Court dismissed Plaintiff's hostile work
environment claim.
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