Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, DISCRIMINATION—SEXUAL HARASSMENT—N.D. Ala.: Employee’s evidence of HWE insufficient, despite similar allegations from three other women, (Aug 10, 2026)

By Nadine E. Roddy, J.D.

Even when considered together with incidents of unwelcome touching of other female employees by the same harasser, the high burden of Title VII was not met.

A female employee who experienced a single incident of unwelcome touching by a male coworker could not establish HWE sexual harassment, even with evidence that the same harasser had engaged in similar misconduct with other female employees, a federal district court in Alabama has ruled. Viewed either singly or collectively, the incidents were insufficiently severe or pervasive for HWE liability (Little v. Topre America Corp., No. 5:25-cv-00310-HDM (N.D. Ala. Aug. 4, 2026)).

Unwelcome touching. A female employee of an automotive parts supply company, who experienced an incident of unwanted touching from a male coworker, brought a Title VII sexual harassment suit against her employer, asserting HWE liability. She included state-law tort claims of (1) negligent failure to train and supervise, as well as (2) outrage. At the time of the incident in question, the employee held the position of Team Leader at one of the employer’s metal stamping plants. One morning as she was standing at a computer checking the weekly schedule, she sensed someone come up behind her. She then felt a hard object, “like an antenna or a pen,” being placed at the top of her buttocks and then being moved down “in[-]between my butt cheeks.” She was wearing blue jeans at the time. She turned around and angrily confronted the person, whom she recognized as another Team Leader. When she told him to stop, his “smirk disappeared.”

Report to HR. Later that same day, the employee reported the incident to Human Resources (HR) and submitted a written account of what had happened. HR personnel spoke with the alleged harasser, who admitted that he had touched the employee with the tip of his pen. He was suspended the same day and told to leave the premises. Several weeks later his employment was terminated.

Lawsuit and prior sexual misconduct. In her lawsuit, the employee presented evidence of prior sexual misconduct by the harasser directed at three other female employees. One such employee, a new hire who worked on the alleged offender’s team, testified on deposition that the harasser would say “flirtatious [and] inappropriate things,” including comments on how her buttocks looked in a pair of pants and questions about her favorite sexual position. The inappropriate remarks ceased after the employee told him to stop, but a few months later he licked her ear “like how a dog would lick something.” The employee reported the incident to company officials, and her request for a transfer to a different team was granted. Another female employee testified about an unwanted “brief shoulder rub” given by the harasser while calling her “my baby,” and a third testified to an occasion when the harasser walked by her and placed his hand on her lower back and upper buttocks “for about 15 seconds.” He removed his hand when she told him not to touch her.

Before the court was the employer’s motion for summary judgment on all three claims.

Sex-based HWE. On the Title VII claim, the court noted that in order to succeed on a HWE claim in the Eleventh Circuit, a plaintiff must show all of the following: (1) she is a member of a protected class; (2) she was subjected to unwelcome harassment; (3) the harassment was based on a protected characteristic, such as sex; (4) the harassment was severe or pervasive enough to alter the terms and conditions of employment; and (5) a basis for employer liability exists.

The fourth element requires a plaintiff to prove that (1) she subjectively perceived the harassment to be severe or pervasive, and (2) her subjective perception was objectively reasonable.

The employer in this case never addressed whether the employee could satisfy the subjective component, and thus the court “cabin[ed] its analysis” to the objective component. To establish this component, a plaintiff must show that a reasonable person in her position would perceive the working environment to be “so hostile or abusive that it affected the very nature of the job.” Further, when the alleged harassment includes physical contact, the court must consider the “totality of the circumstances” in which the act occurred to assess whether the working environment itself was objectively hostile.

The court then found that the undisputed record in this case showed that the harasser’s conduct was “inappropriate and objectionable” but not so severe or pervasive as to alter the terms and conditions of the employee’s employment. No reasonable jury could find that she had experienced severe or pervasive harassment, the court found, when the only alleged harassment she experienced was “a single, quick poke in the buttocks, outside of her blue jeans, with what was likely a pen.” The “poke” did not cause her to trip or fall, bruise, bleed, seek medical attention, or file an injury report. Further, the misconduct involving all four employees, even when taken together, was insufficient to raise a factual question whether the working environment was so severely or pervasively hostile as to alter the terms and conditions of employment. The undisputed evidence showed that these events were scattered over the course of at least 19 months, from March 2022 to October 2023, making them isolated rather than pervasive, according to the court.

State-law claims. The court declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the tort claims, believing that state court would be the better forum.

The case is No. 5:25-cv-00310-HDM.

Judge: Mooty, H., III.

Attorneys: David Jeremy Schatz (Virtus Law Group) for Jessica Little. Whitney R. Brown (Lehr Middlebrooks & Vreeland) for Topre America Corp. Charles A. Powell, IV (Littler Mendelson) for Kelly Ozbolt.

Cases: SexualHarassment Discrimination TortClaims StateLawClaims AlabamaNews