Beckford v. Dept. of Corrs., No. 09-11540, involved an action by female corrections officers claiming that the institution failed to remedy a sexually hostile work environment that male inmates created for female employees. The court of appeals affirmed judgment for plaintiffs, on the grounds that 1) there was no reason to treat prison inmates differently from other third-party harassers and prisons differently from other employers under Title VII; 2) a reasonable jury could have found that prison officials should have enforced the inmate dress policy, which required inmates to wear pants when female staff were in the close management dorms; and 3) the refusal of the district court to instruct the jury about the Faragher defense did not prejudice defendant.
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This appeal presents the question whether the Florida Department of
Corrections can be liable, under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, for
failing to remedy a sexually hostile work environment that male inmates created
for female employees at Martin Correctional Institution. See 42 U.S.C.
§ 2000e–2(a)(1). Melanie Beckford and thirteen other women, all former nonsecurity
employees at Martin, complained that the Department failed to remedy
sexually offensive conduct of inmates, including the frequent use of gender specific
abusive language and pervasive "gunning," the notorious practice of
inmates openly masturbating toward female staff. At trial, a jury heard evidence of
this harassment, considered the ability of the Department to mitigate the
misconduct, and held the Department liable. On appeal, the Department presents
four arguments: (1) the Department, as a matter of law, cannot be liable under Title
VII unless its staff actively encouraged or participated in the harassment; (2) the
female employees failed to prove that the inmates’ harassment was because of sex;
(3) the district court should have instructed the jury about the affirmative defense
recognized in Faragher v. City of Boca Raton, 524 U.S. 775, 807–08, 118 S. Ct.
2275, 2292–93 (1998); and (4) the district court should have severed the
employees’ claims under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 42(b). We conclude that
the jury was entitled to find the Department liable under Title VII because it
unreasonably failed to remedy the sexual harassment by its inmates. We also reject
the other arguments of the Department and affirm.
I. BACKGROUND
Beckford and the 13 other former employees worked at Martin between
1999 and 2002. Beckford, Susan Black, Tita De la Cruz, Charlene Fontneau,
Linda Jones, Paula LaCroix, Joyce Meyer, Donna Pixley, Vesna Poirier, Michelle
Pollock, Lourdes Silvagnoli, and Lee Wascher worked as nurses; Sushma Parekh
worked as a physician; and Janet Smith worked as a classification officer. Each of
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the female employees worked in the "close management" housing dorms at Martin.
The nurses entered the close management dorms each day to pass medication to
inmates, answer sick calls, and respond to medical emergencies. The other former
employees entered the close management dorms at least several times each week to
perform similar duties or to discuss administrative matters with inmates.
According to James Upchurch, the director of security operations for the
Department, the close management dorms house inmates who "have demonstrated
by their behavior and the pattern of their behavior that they can’t be left in the
general population because they pose too great a threat" to other inmates and staff.
Martin houses close management inmates in several separate dorms. Each dorm
comprises four quads, which contain individual inmate cells. Each single cell
contains a bunk, sink, and toilet and has a solid door with a glass window. Each
cell door contains a slot through which prison staff pass medication and food.
Each close management dorm also contains a glass control room or bubble that sits
in the middle of the dorm and provides staff a view of the quads. From the
bubbles, staff can view each cell in a dorm.
While the women were employed at Martin, the close management inmates
abused staff, especially female staff. David Harris, who served as assistant warden
at Martin during the 1990s, testified that close management
"inmates would throw
urine, throw feces on [male security] staff."
Sergeant Brian McDew, who worked
as a corrections officer at Martin during the same period, testified that this behavior
toward male staff did not happen "very often, but it happen[ed]." According to the
testimony of the female employees, the inmates reacted especially poorly to the
presence of female staff in the close management dorms. When the inmates saw
female employees approaching one of the close management dorms, the inmates
called the employees names—including cunt, whore, slut, and bitch—through the
exterior cell windows and explained, in graphic detail, the sexual liberties that the
inmates would take with the employees, if given the opportunity.
The inmates often instructed each other to "lock and load" when they saw
female staff approaching one of the dorms. The inmates’ phrase "lock and load"
referred to the most notorious conduct to which they exposed the female staff:
gunning. That conduct involved exposing themselves and masturbating directly at
staff.
The female employees testified to similar experiences. They testified that
inmates gunned them from the inmates’ cells while the female employees were
waiting in the close management dorm bubbles before working in the quads. To
harass the women waiting in the bubbles, the inmates would stand, a nurse
testified, "at their windows, hanging off the door jambs, standing on the toilets, on
rolled up mattresses" so that the female employees could see the inmates gunning
through the cell windows. The inmates often would ejaculate on the cell windows
and through the food slot or flap on the cell door, sometimes when female staff
were standing at the door. The inmates masturbated when the female employees
were completing paperwork in the dorms, and when the women saw inmates in the
isolation room in the medical building.
The inmates also gunned the female employees when the women responded
to medical emergencies in the close management dorms.
Nurse Poirier testified
that "99.9 percent of the time the emergencies were bogus. It was just for me to
get down there for [the inmates] to have the entertainment for the evening." Nurse
Fontneau explained that the inmates faked emergencies and they "call[ed] because
it was like hiring a call girl or a whore." Nurse Pixley recalled an incident in
which a male nurse responded to an emergency in a close management dorm. She
testified that the male nurse "was back within five minutes because . . . the inmate
cussed him out and said that he didn’t need medical. . . . [The inmate] asked him
where is the female nurse."
Each of the female employees testified about her own humiliating
experiences with gunning. Nurse Meyer, for example, recalled being abandoned
by a male security employee, Lieutenant Ferguson, while she was delivering
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medication in a close management dorm. When Nurse Meyer was alone, "the
inmates in the quad all started to scream and bang on the doors." "[T]hey were
hanging onto the door frames above the door and they were on their toilet and they
were all masturbating." Nurse Meyer estimated that "it was probably 15 inmates
that they were ejaculating and everything on the windows." Lieutenant Ferguson
"totally ignored" Nurse Meyer’s calls for help, and when she confronted him later
about the episode, he said, "‘[Y]ou were looking for it. I saw you, you were
looking for it. You were asking for it.’" Nurse Meyer was scheduled to leave the
Department at the end of that day, but she quit on the spot.
Gunning was a frequent phenomenon. At trial, the female employees
estimated that when they were in the close management dorms, virtually "every
one of" the inmates gunned. Nurse Beckford testified that the inmates used a
"team effort" for gunning the female employees, and Nurse Jones described the
inmates’ behavior as a "chain reaction." The employees also presented evidence
that virtually all the inmates participated in the misconduct and the inmates gunned
only female staff, not the all-male security staff.
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