Title VII Plaintiff Failed To Show She Found Her Workplace Subjectively Hostile
Gloria Bannon sued The University of Chicago, operator of the Argonne National Laboratory where she worked. Bannon, a woman of Mexican ancestry, claimed her supervisor leveled racial epithets at her and repeatedly blocked her attempts to gain promotion from a secretarial position to a supervisory one because of her national origin. Further, Bannon said that after winning promotion in November 2002, she was “frozen out” of opportunities in retaliation for reporting funding irregularities. Bannon began a medical leave in February 2003, and never returned to work. Instead, she initiated this action, claiming she was: (1) denied promotion because of her national origin, (2) subjected to a hostile work environment, and (3) constructively discharged in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the defendant university. The 7th Circuit affirmed, concluding that: 1) Bannon’s failure-to-promote claim was not timely; 2) Bannon failed to demonstrate that she considered her workplace to be subjectively offensive, as required to establish a Title VII hostile work environment claim, even though her supervisor used racial slurs against her, where Bannon: socialized with the supervisor outside of work several times during the same period when she said he was harassing her; invited the supervisor to lunch; praised the supervisor as a “great boss;” and failed to report the supervisor's behavior to his superiors even though the offensive conduct continued for at least five years; and 3) Bannon's constructive discharge claim failed because she was unable to show that the conduct at issue was sufficient to meet the lower standard for harassment, which necessarily implied that it was insufficient to constitute a constructive discharge.
Bannon v. University of Chicago
The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals’ jurisdiction includes Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin.