Devil is in the details: Court demands particulars of harassment claim

On April 12, the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey granted in part and denied in part a request to dismiss an employee’s sexual harassment and retaliation claims under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (NJLAD). The employee claimed she was sexually harassed by her coworker and her supervisors took retaliatory action against her for reporting the alleged misconduct. The district court found she failed to sufficiently plead her sexual harassment claim for lack of pervasive harassment and failed in part to sufficiently plead her retaliation claim for lack of temporal proximity.

Facts

On June 26, 2017, Natalie Spence was hired as a judiciary clerk in the Camden Vicinage Child Support Division of the Camden County Probation Department. She claims within a few days of her starting the job, coworker John Callender began to sexually harass her. The alleged conduct included:

• Pressing his groin into her;
• Asking inappropriate and personal questions;
• Attempting inappropriate physical contact;
• Blowing kisses;
• Using a hot dog to make sexually offensive gestures; and
• Making similar gestures while straddling a chair and uttering sexual noises.

Spence reported the behavior to her supervisor but was told Callender wasn’t a threat and that she should be patient with him. She claims the behavior continued over the next few weeks. When she confronted Callender about the behavior, he told her no one would believe her complaints because she was new to the position.