The plaintiff, a police officer, arrested the Mayor for driving under the influence. The Mayor allegedly referred to the police officer as a “racist,” a “cracker,” a “white mother fucker,” a “member of the KKK,” and a “Nazi,” and called an African American officer a “sellout,” an “Uncle Tom,” and a “token.” What is unusual is that these alleged remarks occurred while the arrest was being processed and hence, this is not your typical employment case. Nevertheless, the court applied the stray remarks doctrine and dismissed the case, reasoning:
Johnstone fails to plead facts sufficient to establish a hostile work environment claim. Since one consideration is the frequency of the alleged abuse, his reliance on a single incident over the course of a nearly 30-year career weighs heavily against him, although that alone is not dispositive. More significant is that an abusive tirade by a person arrested for driving under the influence is not sufficient “to alter the conditions,” id. at 373, of Johnstone’s employment. The Supreme Court has cautioned that the Title VII analysis requires careful consideration of the social context in which particular behavior occurs and is experienced by its target. A professional football player’s working environment is not severely or pervasively abusive, for example, if the coach smacks him on the buttocks as he heads onto the field--even if the same behavior would reasonably be experienced as abusive by the coach’s secretary (male or female) back at the office. Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Servs., Inc., 523 U.S. 75, 81 11 (1998). Jenkins’s alleged comments were severe, but they were not made in the context of an employer addressing an employee in the workplace; they were made by an apparently intoxicated citizen who was belligerent because he was being taken into custody and processed for violating the law. Being subjected to an intoxicated and verbally abusive perpetrator does not alter the conditions of a police officer’s employment or create an actionably hostile work environment, even if the person arrested happens to be the mayor.