Where a postal service worker asserted claims for disparate treatment, hostile work environment and retaliation, and the district court granted judgment to the postal service after it prevailed on the hostile work environment and retaliation claims, the appeal was dismissed so that the district court could rule on the disparate treatment claim.
Background
Mamie Hansley sued the United States Postal Service over alleged Title VII violations at the post office where she worked. Hansley’s complaint pleaded, in substance, three claims: (1) disparate treatment because of race; (2) race-based hostile work environment and (3) retaliation. The government filed an answer and, on the last day of discovery, moved for judgment on the pleadings.
The district court first dispatched with Hansley’s hostile work environment claim. In the district court’s view, Hansley pleaded no facts tying multiple unpleasant workplace incidents to her race or a protected activity. Next, the district court found that Hansley hadn’t stated a retaliation claim. It repeated that Hansley had plausibly alleged neither a hostile work environment nor facts to show that the work schedule and the letter of discipline were materially adverse actions.
Having disposed of Hansley’s two main claims, the district court granted the government’s motion and entered final judgment against Hansley. But despite acknowledging Hansley’s disparate treatment claim, the court never addressed it. Still, Hansley appealed.
Analysis
The parties agree that the district court didn’t resolve Hansley’s disparate treatment claim. But the government asserts that Hansley’s “disparate treatment claim properly is addressed under the hostile work environment theory.” Yet the court didn’t construe the complaint in that way. Instead, it mentioned the disparate treatment claim but didn’t analyze it.
The district court also didn’t rule on Hansley’s disparate treatment claim implicitly. The court found that some actions that Hansley pleaded “may give rise to an inference of conduct on account of race,” but it concluded that none of those actions, “together or in combination,” was “sufficiently severe or pervasive to meet the high bar of a hostile work environment claim.”
But a conclusion like that can’t resolve a disparate treatment claim. Employment actions don’t need to be severe or pervasive to be actionable as disparate treatment—they need only affect “an identifiable term or condition of employment.” Indeed, hostile work environment claims must satisfy the “severe or pervasive” requirement precisely to distinguish harassment that “alter[s] the conditions of the victim’s employment” from harassment that doesn’t. The district court never explained whether any act alleged in the complaint affected Hansley’s terms or conditions of employment, so it didn’t pass judgment on Hansley’s disparate impact theory.
Perhaps the district court meant to rule on disparate treatment by holding that Hansley hadn’t alleged an adverse employment action for retaliation purposes. The cases that it cited paint the “adverse employment action” element of “discrimination and retaliation claims” as identical. But even if the district court tried to kill two birds with one stone, the rule that it cited no longer applies. This year, Muldrow v. City of St. Louis, 601 U.S. 346 (2024), refused to “import” retaliation’s “significant-harm requirement” into disparate-treatment cases.
Dismissed and remanded.