Ziner v. Cedar Crest College - ED Pa. - May 2006
http://www.paed.uscourts.gov/documents/opinions/06D0662P.pdf
Defendant's motion for judgment on the pleadings denied.
exhaustion of administrative remedies
Employer claimed that plaintiff failure to exhaust administrative remedies where, in his court complaint, plaintiff alleged a later instance showing hostile work environment that was not in P's EEOC complaint, because it happened long after the complaint was filed. The court rejected this argument and held that Plaintiff's new allegations could be considered by the court. They "assert nothing more than an additional incident contributing to [an] overall pattern of harassment....He has not brought any new cause of action."
"adverse employment action"
The court also rejected the argument that Plaintiff did not suffer any "adverse employment action," holding that Title VII's language is "not limited to economic or tangible discrimination" but rather is intended to "strike at the entire spectrum of disparate treatment of men and women in employment, which includes requiring people to work in a discriminatorily hostile or abusive work environment," including a situation where the "workplace is permeated" with treatment that is "sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of the victim's employment and create an abusive working environment."
gender discrimination
The court said that in Title VII cases, it considers the "aggregate effect of all evidence and reasonable inferences therefrom," including those concerning incidents of what may appear to be facially neutral treatment.
