ALLENTOWN – According to a federal judge, chair and recliner manufacturer La-Z-Boy successfully defended itself against claims of race discrimination and a hostile work environment brought by a former sales representative.
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania Judge John M. Gallagher ordered a motion for dismissal filed by La-Z-Boy, Inc. be granted on Feb. 4, in litigation brought against it by former employee Erica Chandler.
“Chandler is an African-American woman who, in March 2018, applied for a sales position with La-Z-Boy. As part of the application, Chandler underwent a background check. Thereafter, a human resources representative from La-Z-Boy asked Chandler about a 16 year-old criminal conviction on her record. Chandler alleges that La-Z-Boy ‘does not consider the irrelevant convictions of its Caucasian employees’ during its hiring process. In any event, La-Z-Boy hired Chandler in April 2018,” Gallagher said.
“Just three weeks into Chandler’s employment, she was called a ‘colored girl’ by her manager. Chandler objected to the comment and reported the incident to her district supervisor. Chandler alleges that, over the following year, she was ‘harassed, taunted and singled out on a daily basis.’ Her white colleagues would whisper ‘sick’ and ‘lazy’ as Chandler walked by. This taunting affected Chandler ‘physically and emotionally.’ Ultimately, it prompted Chandler to resign from her position in May 2019. Chandler now asserts that she ‘experienced discrimination during the entire duration of her employment with’ La-Z-Boy and was subjected to a hostile work environment.”
While Chandler pled she was “constructively discharged in May of 2019, Gallagher found she “failed to allege conditions of discrimination ‘so intolerable that a reasonable person subject to them would resign.”
“The lone piece of race-related harassment alleged here is the ‘colored girl’ comment, which occurred only once, over a year before Chandler’s resignation. Constructive discharge requires a ‘greater severity or pervasiveness of harassment than the minimum required to prove a hostile working environment,” Gallagher stated.
“As such, the ‘colored girl’ comment, while clearly offensive, is not the sort of ‘extremely serious’ comment that would otherwise support a constructive discharge claim. Chandler’s discrimination claim fails.”
Gallagher then addressed the hostile work environment allegation.
“Chandler’s hostile work environment claim is primarily rooted in the aforementioned ‘colored girl’ comment. It bears repeating that ‘isolated incidents and offhanded comments…are not sufficient to sustain a hostile work environment.’ The ‘colored girl’ comment is undoubtedly offensive, but ‘the fact that plaintiff encountered an unpleasant isolated incident does not mean that the terms and conditions of plaintiff’s employment were altered,” Gallagher said.
“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. Chandler has not alleged a plausible hostile work environment claim.”
While granting La-Z-Boy’s motion to dismiss, Gallagher also granted Chandler leave to file an amended complaint, which must be done no later than March 4.
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania case 5:21-cv-05101
From the Pennsylvania Record: Reach Courts Reporter Nicholas Malfitano at nick.malfitano@therecordinc.com