University of Virginia Law School students in the Appellate Litigation Clinic had the challenge of tackling a seemingly unprecedented set of facts in a Title VII workplace harassment case — and won a decision Aug. 30 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit after more than two years of work.
The case, Chapman v. Oakland Living Center, was particularly interesting to Professor Scott Ballenger ’96, who leads the clinic, because it was not a typical case of employer harassment.
“It’s probably now the leading precedent nationwide about how you analyze the situation when a supervisor’s kid does something bad in the workplace,” Ballenger said.
While Tonya Chapman was an employee at the Oakland Living Center, a nursing home in Rutherford, North Carolina, she claimed to have experienced several forms of harassment and discrimination at work. The case specifically highlights two instances where the 6-year-old child of one of her supervisors used racial slurs when addressing her. In the first incident the child said that her father had used a racially derogatory slur while complaining that she had not come to work. The second time the child taunted her repeatedly with the word. After the supervisor discovered what the child had said to Chapman, he ordered the child to apologize; when the child failed to do so, he simply walked away.
The child said the slur again and she resigned immediately, believing the work environment would not improve, Ballenger said.
The clinic...
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