Missing notes and a colleague never interviewed gave a former nurse a second shot at trial
A federal appeals court has revived a former nurse's harassment claims, ruling a jury must weigh how her Texas hospital handled them.
On June 23, 2026, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that a former registered nurse, Brenda Brenyah, can take her hostile-work-environment claims to trial against Corpus Christi Medical Center, the multi-hospital system that once employed her. The court upheld summary judgment - a ruling that ends a claim before trial - for the employer on most of her claims, but reversed on her Title VII and Section 1981 hostile-work-environment claims and sent them back to the district court.
The nurse, who is Black and was born in Ghana, joined the system's Bay Area Hospital in March 2017 on a 90-day probation. She said that from that April, co-workers mocked her accent and her African food and made comments she found offensive, sometimes almost every shift. In the court's account of her evidence, co-workers said her African food "st[ank]," and one nurse said Black people "play the race card" and that she had a "thing for Filipinos," preferring them over Black employees. She also pointed to harassment a Black colleague faced, some of which she said she saw.
She said she reported the conduct, but that supervisors did too little. The hospital said it moved fast - investigating, coaching nurses and offering her a transfer she turned down. But she...
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