February 07th, 2019

US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Opinions
Gardner v. CLC of Pascagoula, LLC

Docket: 17-60072
Opinion Date: February 6, 2019
Judge: Costa
Areas of Law: Civil Rights, Constitutional Law, Labor & Employment Law

The Fifth Circuit withdrew the prior opinion and substituted the following opinion. In this case, a nurse alleged that an assisted living center allowed a hostile work environment to continue by not preventing a resident's repetitive harassment. Plaintiff filed suit under Title VII after she was terminated in part for refusing to care for an aggressive patient in a nursing home. The court reversed the district court's grant of summary judgment on the harassment claim and held that the evidence of persistent and often physical harassment by the aggressive patient was enough to allow a jury to decide whether a reasonable caregiver on the receiving end of the harassment would have viewed it as sufficiently severe or pervasive even considering the medical condition of the harasser. In this case, an objectively reasonable caregiver would not expect a patient to grope her daily, injure her so badly she could not work for three months, and have her complaints met with laughter and dismissal by the administration. The court allowed the district court to consider plaintiff's retaliation claim via direct evidence for the first instance on remand.

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