Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, DISCRIMINATION—SEXUAL HARASSMENT—3d Cir.: Correctional officer, referred to as ‘bedazzled twat,’ revives hostile environment claim, (May 21, 2025)

By Kathleen Kapusta, J.D.

The appeals court also reversed summary judgment against the correctional officer’s retaliation claim.

After affirming a district court’s order, summarily granted, permitting the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (DOC) to file a summary judgment motion five months after the scheduling order deadline, the Third Circuit, in a nonprecedential decision, reversed the grant of summary judgment against a former correctional officer’s sexual harassment and retaliation claims. As to her retaliation claim, her testimony, based on personal knowledge, to specific facts created a fact issue as to the voluntariness of her purported resignation. Regarding her hostile work environment claim, the lower court failed to give adequate weight to the way in which allegations of a rumor regarding her sexual activity formed a unified mosaic. Dissenting, Chief Judge Chagares would have remanded for reconsideration of the DOC’s motion for leave to file its untimely summary judgment motion (Cuff v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, No. 23-3246 (3d Cir. May 20, 2025, unpublished)).

The employee, who was hired by the DOC in October 2018, began working at the State Correctional Institute at Muncy in May 2019. Shortly after she arrived, a male sergeant asked her how she could afford her car and wondered which supervisor she was married to, a female officer made a comment about her dress that the employee perceived as implying she was promiscuous, and a female sergeant berated her for viewing herself as special for failing to immediately answer her call. Based on widespread stereotypes at the facility regarding female employees with desirable assignments, she viewed this as an accusation of trading sexual favors.

Bedazzled twat. In October 2019, the employee claimed her personal pepper spray had been stolen from an off-site shooting range and left at the facility. Though the sergeant accused her of violating facility regulations, an investigation accepted her claim the spray had been stolen. In response, the sergeant, at a union meeting the employee did not attend, accused her of being a “bedazzled twat” and wondered who she was “f*****g.” This accusation quickly spread, and the employee was not only confronted by two supervisors regarding the rumor, another officer repeatedly told her she was a bedazzled twat who should not be speaking to her.

Feminine products incident. The employee also claimed that a male officer at a metal detector performed an unnecessary search of her tampons and feminine napkins and yelled at her for being a “f*****g idiot” and “f*****g liar.” She reported these incidents to her supervisors who purportedly told her to ignore them and insinuated she might be fired if she filed a written report.

Resignation. Nevertheless, she met with an EEO investigator who, after investigating, advised her to seek a hardship transfer. The employee contracted HR and was allegedly told she would have to resign before she could be transferred. After she submitted a written resignation, her transfer request was denied because she was no longer an employee.

Lower court proceedings. The employee sued and after multiple discovery extension requests, the court set the final discovery deadline for February 3, 2023, but left the dispositive motion deadline as February 8, 2023. In July, the DOC realized it had missed the deadline and moved for leave to file a dispositive motion nunc pro tunc, which the court granted. The DOC then moved for summary judgment, which the court also granted.

Out-of-time motion. Appealing, the employee first challenged the district court’s order permitting the DOC to file an out-of-time summary judgment motion without making a formal finding of good cause or permitting responsive briefing. The Third Circuit, affirming, noted that while it would have been preferrable for the lower court to hear the employee’s position before granting the extension, after the discovery deadline was extended to near the original dispositive motion deadline, it was within its discretion to conform the schedule by setting a new dispositive motion date. Further, the court noted, the employee did not show any prejudice from this extension.

Retaliation. The court next addressed the district court’s determination that the employee failed to make out a prima facie case of retaliation because the only evidence that DOC tricked her into resigning was her own deposition testimony. While the appeals court agreed that conclusory testimony by a self-serving party does not create a genuine question of fact, it noted that the employee testified at length to a specific conversation, on a specific date, with a specific person.

Specifically, she testified that the HR employee told her she needed to bring in her uniforms and sign a resignation if she intended to transfer out of the facility. She also testified that when she asked what she would wear at her next job, she was told she would get a uniform when she transferred. Further, she repeated these details throughout her deposition. While the HR employee’s version of the conversation was quite different, the court found the employee’s testimony was sufficient to create a triable fact issue precluding summary judgment.

Hostile work environment. Regarding the employee’s hostile work environment claim, the court noted that while the district court found nine of her allegations did not constitute sex discrimination, she only defended four on appeal. As to two of those four, said the appeals court, the district court did find they were based on sex. As to a third, the employee being berated for reporting the feminine products incident, the court found that also should have been treated as discrimination based on sex.

The fourth incident, the stealing of the employee’s pepper spray and leaving it as the facility, was facially sex neutral. But given her broader evidence of sex discrimination, including accusations by the officer that the employee was a “bedazzled twat,” the court found a reasonable jury could conclude that this incident was also motivated by sex.

Severe/pervasive. As to the district court’s finding that the employee’s evidence of “eight incidents and one rumor,” some of which were “relatively benign,” was insufficient to support her claim, the appeals court noted that the lower court failed to account for the two additional incidents it determined to be plausibly gender-based. Nor did it give weight to the claim that multiple officers confronted her regarding the rumor that she received preferential treatment because she was married to a State Correctional Institute captain. Given that all these events appeared to have occurred during a period of just over five months, the court found her allegations “go further than those we have generally held inadequate at the summary judgment stage.”

Unified mosaic. Further, said the appeals court, the district court failed to give adequate weight to the way in which the employee’s allegations formed a unified mosaic. “Except for the feminine-products search and its aftermath,” the court observed, “each allegation is interwoven with a common rumor—that [the employee] was trading sexual favors for special treatment.” Such rumors, said the court, “are humiliating, inherently gendered, and if serious can serve as the basis for a Title VII claim.”

Though the district court found the rumors occurred during a brief period and were not widespread or enduring, viewed holistically, the appeals court found the employee “provided evidence of a rumor running at least from May through October, which reached at least four supervisors, three colleagues, the SCI-Muncy inmates [she] was supervising, and everyone at the union meeting. This is neither so brief nor so confined to be non-hostile as a matter of law.”

And while the district court also noted that the supervisor with whom the employee was purportedly having the affair did not foster the rumors, she presented evidence the rumors derived from invidious stereotypes, her colleagues humiliated her regarding the rumors, and her superiors repeatedly refused to take any action to address them. “Collectively,” the court stated, “these factors take the rumors regarding her sexual activity outside of the realm of standard workplace gossip.” Accordingly, the appeals court reversed summary judgment against this claim as well.

The case is No. 23-3246.

Judge: Roth, J.

Attorneys: Joshua J. Cochran (Schemery Zicolello) for Brandy S. Cuff. Hannah Kogan, Office of the Attorney General of Pennsylvania, for Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Department of Corrections.

Cases: SexualHarassment SexDiscrimination Discrimination Retaliation Discharge PublicEmployees Procedure DelawareNews NewJerseyNews PennsylvaniaNews