A federal appeals court recently held that an employer was not liable for sexual harassment to an employee who complained only about harassment, not sex-based harassment. Medina-Rivera v. MVM Inc., No. 11-2419 (1st Cir. April 10, 2013).
In 2008, Estrella Medina-Rivera worked as a part-time detention officer for MVM, Inc., a security company in Puerto Rico. In October 2008, Medina complained to her supervisor that an unnamed federal agent with whom she worked was “bothering” her with repeated calls to her personal telephone. A couple of weeks later, Medina told her supervisor that the agent sexually assaulted her by kissing and touching her. For the first time, Medina mentioned the agent by name and also complained that he tried to hug her, told her that she smelled good, and invaded her personal space. The supervisor immediately filed an administrative complaint against the agent, who was transferred to another office in another city soon thereafter.
Though the matter was resolved, Medina sued her employer for sexual harassment and retaliation in violation of Title VII. Affirming the trial court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of MVM, the First Circuit determined that the company was not liable for any hostile work environment stemming from the agent’s alleged repeated phone calls and subsequent conduct. While Medina was not required to use “buzzwords like ‘sex’ or ‘sexual’ harassment,” the court found that she never put MVM on notice that she felt sexually harassed by the agent’s phone calls. Medina claimed the calls “bothered” her, but never mentioned that they were sex-related. And once she reported the agent’s sexually charged conduct – such as trying to hug her and assaulting her – the company took immediate action end any harassment. The court also noted that out of the alleged 100 calls Medina said she received, she could only document that the agent made two of them.
Medina’s allegations of retaliation also failed. She claimed that an MVM manager picked on her during a sexual harassment training seminar in December 2008 in retaliation for her October complaint. Because Medina failed to show the manager even knew about her harassment complaint, the court dismissed her claim.