San Antonio Water Sys. v. Nicholas
No. 13-0966
Case Summary written by Austin De Boer, Staff Member.
JUSTICE BROWN delivered the opinion of the Court.
Debra Nicholas (Nicholas) sued her former employer, San Antonio Water System (SAWS), claiming it violated the Texas Commission on Human Rights Act (TCHRA) by terminating her employment as “retaliation for confronting [Greg] Flores,” a coworker, about his alleged inappropriate lunch invitations to other female employees. After an overly cautious employee reported Greg Flores’s actions, Nicholas claimed she confronted him and suggested he discontinue his actions due to a possible sexual-harassment claim against SAWS. Three years later, after SAWS underwent reorganization, Nicholas was appointed to be Flores’s subordinate, shortly thereafter her position was eliminated. Nicholas was not interviewed for other positions.
At trial, the jury found for Nicholas, concluding she “opposed sexual harassment by counseling or reprimanding Flores, was fired because of it, and awarded [her] nearly $1 million in damages.” SAWS appealed, claiming the following: (1) “no reasonable person could believe sexual harassment under the TCHRA has occurred, and therefore Nicholas did not engage in a ‘protected activity’ under the TCHRA when she confronted [her co-worker];” (2) Nicholas “could not show a causal link between her confronting [her co-worker] and her termination nearly three years later;” and (3) “that the trial court failed to apply a statutory damages cap to Nicholas’s front-pay damages award. The court of appeals affirmed; SAWS appealed. Here, the Court dismissed Nicholas’s claim on claim one; therefore, the Court did not consider claims two or three.
Issue: Whether Nicholas could have reasonably believed Flores’s actions amounted to a sexual harassment claim and, therefore she engaged in a “protected activity” under the TCHRA when she confronted him about his alleged inappropriate lunch invitations.
Here, the Court disagreed with the court of appeals, holding “no reasonable person could have believed the invitations gave rise to an actionable sexual harassment claim. . . . Nicholas did not engage in a protected activity under the TCHRA.” Therefore, SAWS retained its governmental immunity and the trial court did not have jurisdiction over Nicholas’s claim.
SAWS, a governmental entity, was privy to governmental immunity. The Texas Legislature, however, waives immunity if a plaintiff alleges a violation of the TCHRA by “pleading facts that state a claim thereunder.” Therefore, a TCHRA claim is “jurisdictional in nature,” meaning if a plaintiff cannot establish the prima facie elements of a TCHRA, a governmental entity retains immunity. To establish a TCHRA violation, Nicholas needed to show: “(1) she engaged in an activity protected by the TCHRA; (2) an adverse employment action occurred; and (3) there exist[ed] a causal link between the protected activity and the adverse action.” Furthermore, to establish the first element, “the employee [was required to] demonstrate a good faith, reasonable belief that the underlying discriminatory practice violated the TCHRA.”
A sexual-harassment claim is actionable “only if it is so severe or pervasive as to alter the conditions of [the victim’s] employment and create an abusive work environment.” Courts look to a variety of contributing factors, including frequency, severity, nature (e.g., threatening or humiliating), offensiveness, and the extent to which the conduct interferes with the victim’s work performance.
Here, the “lunch invitations were not so severe or pervasive as to alter the conditions of employment or create an abusive work environment.” The employee who reported Flores’s conduct did so “out of an abundance of caution, though he did not believe SAWS’s sexual-harassment policy has been violated.” Similarly, courts have ruled much more offensive acts as not meeting the required threshold, including: (1) “a single incident of [a] male employee reading aloud sexual innuendo contained in a psychological evaluation;” (2) “a single instance of [a] male employee entering [the] women’s restroom and ‘gawking’ at undressed women;” or (3) where a male supervisor commented on a female coworkers underwear “being visible under her uniform.”
For the aforementioned reasons, the Court determined “no reasonable person could have believed the invitations gave rise to an actionable sexual-harassment claim.” As a result, Nicholas’s actions of counseling or reprimanding Flores were not a “protected activity” under the TCHRA. Therefore, “she never pleaded a claim under the TCHRA” and SAWS governmental immunity remained intact. Because of SAWS’s governmental immunity, the trial court lacked jurisdiction over Nicholas’s claim. The Court “reverse[d] the contrary judgment of the court of appeals and render[ed] judgment dismissing Nicholas’s claim.”