On our New Jersey blog, we have mentioned briefly motions for summary judgment in the context of employment discrimination cases. To elaborate further, a motion for summary judgment is a procedural move in a lawsuit that basically asserts that the case can be concluded before it goes to the jury because the facts are so far in favor of one party. Such motions are not often granted because our legal system favors letting a jury hear the case where there is a reasonable dispute on the facts. To reflect this preference, the standard for judging a motion for summary judgment favors the party that is not requesting it.

Even so, this week a U.S. District Court partially granted plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment in a racial harassment case. The judge ruled that the facts evinced such a pervasive pattern of discriminatory conduct that a reasonable jury would have to find in favor of the plaintiffs, who were a number of African-American employees at a construction company.

According to the undisputed facts in the case, supervisors and other workers routinely used offensive racial language when talking to, and in the presence of, the African-American employees. Racially inappropriate jokes were common, as was racist graffiti, which workers found scrawled on the surfaces of portable toilets used at the worksites. In total, the facts demonstrated that African-American workers were routinely subjected to a hostile work environment.

The harassed workers repeatedly brought the offensive conduct to their superiors’ attention, but nothing was done to correct and prevent it, in part because the supervisors to whom the conduct was reported were the very same people who were engaging in the conduct. Under the company’s anti-harassment procedure, however, affected employees did not have the ability to report the conduct to other persons in management. The court declared this reporting structure “unreasonable as a matter of law.”

In court, the defendants asserted that the plaintiffs were lying and they filed a motion for sanctions against the workers. The court denied the motion, stating that if anything, it would be more disposed to sanction the defendants for filing a wasteful motion.

Source: U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, “EEOC Wins Rare Partial Summary Judgment Ruling in Racial Harassment Case,” Oct. 16, 2012

• The Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects workers from racial discrimination in the workplace. But as this case illustrates, the law alone does not deter every business from illegal practices. Workers must enforce the law to achieve justice. You can learn more by visiting our Kingston employment discrimination page.