A recent case in which a U.S. federal appeals court had to determine whether a Texas pharmacy’s management created a hostile work environment for an employee with asthma has faced significant scrutiny. The employee had requested permission to wear a mask to protect themselves against Covid-19, only to be subsequently berated and insulted.
The appeal held before the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit had the judges raising challenging queries for counsel from both the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and US Drug Mart Inc. The EEOC is making an attempt to breathe new life into its disability discrimination lawsuit, which came after the pharmacy achieved victory in the lower court.
A decision in this case could possibly refine the legal criteria utilized to discern when a single act of harassment is sufficiently severe to establish an illegal hostile work environment. The EEOC filed the lawsuit under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), but the same standard is often used under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which outlaws bias based on a broad range of traits like race and sex.
The argument revolves around a recorded exchange at the onset of the pandemic in 2020 between pharmacy technician trainee, David Calzada, who was refused permission to wear a mask, and two managers. The supervisors threatened to fire Calzada, berating him as a “disrespectful, stupid little kid” and criticizing him for behavior that could get minors “locked in their rooms for a while or even spanked.”
Calzada ended up resigning just hours after the altercation, citing that he felt he had no other option.
In a debate with the EEOC lawyer, Jeremy Horowitz, Fifth Circuit Judge Kurt Engelhardt inquired about the limiting principle for defining a single incident as a creation of a hostile work environment. He expressed concern over whether every instance of a boss chastising a subordinate — even in a severely rude tone — could legally be considered an offensive action.
Horowitz contended that the case at hand presented a rather severe instance due to management’s harassment of Calzada in response to a potentially life-saving accommodation request. He explained that replicating such a unique scenario would be difficult.
While the lawyer of US Drug Mart proposed that abusive incidents constituting a hostile work environment generally attacked the victim’s personal identity, Judge Leslie Southwick countered that the severity of harassment shouldn’t be assessed on a sliding scale, where racial attacks are deemed more severe than ones against a person fearing severe illness due to the uncertainty of Covid-19’s early days.
The case continues to be under review, with the potential to redefine the standards of workplace behavior in the era of pandemic precautions.