ONCALE
V. SUNDOWNER OFFSHORE OIL DRILLING, March 1998,
US SUPREME COURT
Petitioner Oncale filed
a complaint against his employer, respondent Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc.,
claiming that sexual harassment directed against him by co-workers in their
workplace constituted "discrimination because of sex" prohibited by
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Relying on Fifth Circuit precedent,
the District Court held that Oncale, a male, had no Title VII cause of action
for harassment by male coworkers. The Fifth Circuit affirmed.
(The US Supreme Court however),
held that sex discrimination consisting of same-sex sexual harassment is actionable
under Title VII. Title VII's prohibition of discrimination "because of
. . . sex" protects men as well as women, Newport News Shipbuilding &
Dry Dock Co. v. EEOC, 462 U.S. 669, 682, and in the related context of racial
discrimination in the workplace this Court has rejected any conclusive presumption
that an employer will not discriminate against members of his own race, Castaneda
v. Partida, 430 U.S. 482, 499. There is no justification in Title VII's language
or the Court's precedents for a categorical rule barring a claim of discrimination
"because of . . . sex" merely because the plaintiff and the defendant
(or the person charged with acting on behalf of the defendant) are of the same
sex. Recognizing liability for same-sex harassment will not transform Title
VII into a general civility code for the American workplace, since Title VII
is directed at discrimination because of sex, not merely conduct tinged with
offensive sexual connotations; since the statute does not reach genuine but
innocuous differences in the ways men and women routinely interact with members
of the same, and the opposite, sex; and since the objective severity of harassment
should be judged from the perspective of a reasonable person in the plaintiff's
position, considering all the circumstances. This case presents the question
whether workplace harassment can violate Title VII's prohibition against "discrimination
because of… sex" when the harasser and the harassed employee are of
the same sex.
The District Court having
granted summary judgment for respondent, we must assume the facts to be as alleged
by petitioner Joseph Oncale. The precise details are irrelevant to the legal
point we must decide, and in the interest of both brevity and dignity we shall
describe them only generally. In late October 1991, Oncale was working for respondent
Sundowner Offshore Services on a Chevron U. S. A., Inc., oil platform in the
Gulf of Mexico. He was employed as a roustabout on an eight-man crew, which
included respondents John Lyons, Danny Pippen, and Brandon Johnson. Lyons, the
crane operator, and Pippen, the driller, had supervisory authority, App. 41,
77, 43. On several occasions, Oncale was forcibly subjected to sex related,
humiliating actions against him by Lyons,
Pippen and Johnson in the presence of the rest of the crew. Pippen and Lyons
also physically assaulted Oncale in a sexual manner, and Lyons threatened him
with rape.
Oncale's complaints to
supervisory personnel produced no remedial action; in fact, the company's Safety
Compliance Clerk, Valent Hohen, told Oncale that Lyons and Pippen "picked
[on] him all the time too," and called him a name suggesting homosexuality.
Oncale eventually quit-asking that his pink slip reflect that he "voluntarily
left due to sexual harassment and verbal abuse." When asked at his deposition
why he left Sundowner, Oncale stated, "I felt that if I didn't leave my
job, that I would be raped or forced to have sex."
Title VII of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964 provides, in relevant part, that "[i]t shall be an unlawful
employment practice for an employer . . . to discriminate against any individual
with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment,
because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin."
78 Stat. 255, as amended, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a)(1). We have held that
this not only covers "terms" and "conditions" in the narrow
contractual sense, but "evinces a congressional intent to strike at the
entire spectrum of disparate treatment of men and women in employment."
Meritor Savings Bank, FSB v. Vinson, 477 U.S. 57, 64 (1986) "When the workplace
is permeated with discriminatory intimidation, ridicule, and insult that is
sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of the victim's employment
and create an abusive working environment, Title VII is violated," Harris
v. Forklift Systems, Inc., 510 U.S. 17, 21 (1993). We see no justification in
the statutory language or our precedents for a categorical rule excluding same-sex
harassment claims from the coverage of Title VII. As some courts have observed,
male-on-male sexual harassment in the workplace was assuredly not the principal
evil Congress was concerned with when it enacted Title VII. But statutory prohibitions
often go beyond the principal evil to cover reasonably comparable evils, and
it is ultimately the provisions of our laws rather than the principal concerns
of our legislators by which we are governed. Title VII prohibits "discrimination
because of sex" in the "terms" or "conditions" of employment.
Our holding that this includes sexual harassment must extend to sexual harassment
of any kind that meets the statutory requirements. A same-sex harassment plaintiff
may also, of course, offer direct comparative evidence about how the alleged
harasser treated members of both sexes in a mixed-sex workplace. Whatever evidentiary
route the plaintiff chooses to follow, he or she must always prove that the
conduct at issue was not merely tinged with offensive sexual connotations, but
actually constituted "discrimination because of sex."
