White Employee: Woke Training Created a Hostile Work Environment

In one of the latest woke training lawsuits, a Colorado employee claimed his employer’s mandatory DEI training created a hostile work environment.

When the case reached the Tenth Circuit, the appeals court affirmed a ruling in the employer’s favor.

Even so, the court’s decision contained a stark warning for employers: In some cases, DEI training can create hostile work environments. Here’s what you need to know:

Employee: Woke training made ‘gross generalizations’ based on race

An employee worked for the Colorado Department of Corrections, which implemented mandatory DEI training.

In the employee’s view, the training program “paint[ed] a grim picture” of the U.S. “as a racist country permeated with discrimination.”

Moreover, the training made “sweeping negative generalizations regarding individuals who are white, and other gross generalizations about members of other racial demographics,” the employee asserted.

Training included woke terms

The employee took issue with some of the terminology listed in the training program’s glossary of terms. Specifically, the glossary defined the following terms as listed below:

• White Fragility: Discomfort and defensiveness, often triggered by feelings of fear or guilt, on the part of a white person when confronted by information about racial inequality and injustice.
• Race: A social construct that artificially groups people by skin tone and other physical traits. The concept, which has no genetic or scientific basis, was created and used to justify the social and economic oppression of people of color by white people.
• White Exceptionalism: The belief held by some white allies that they are exceptions to white racism even though they fail to address the implicit ways in which they perpetuate white supremacy. These individuals are often more interested in not seeming racist than actually improving the lives of people of color.

Did recommendations push a woke agenda?

The training also included an Other Tools & Resources section that the employee said he felt “pressure[d] to review.” One recommended video, titled “Redlined, A Legacy of Housing Discrimination,” “describes white individuals as having a misplaced sense of success,” the employee’s lawsuit alleged.

The training also recommended two books: White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo, and How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi. In the employee’s view, both books “entrench invidious racial stereotypes.”

The employee asserted that the training materials “created a culture of suspicion and distrust” in the workplace. He claimed that his “own experiences [were] severe and pervasive.” He insisted that “his knowledge that his colleagues were being instructed in the same manner with the same trainings exacerbated the hostile [work] environment.”

Moreover, the employee said that he felt “harassed and intimidated to the point that he no longer felt comfortable” at work. He said that he filed a complaint through the formal complaint process and was told that no investigation would be done because he “did not establish reasonable cause to indicate the presence of discrimination [or] discriminatory harassment.”

The employee said he resigned due to the employer’s “refusal to investigate or remedy the situation.” He sued, alleging a hostile work environment claim under Title VII.

The district court dismissed the employee’s claim, finding he failed to plausibly allege the harassment was “severe or pervasive.”

The employee appealed to the Tenth Circuit.

What is a Title VII hostile work environment?

To state a racially hostile work environment under Title VII, the employee had to allege:

• He was a member of a protected class
• He was subjected to unwelcome harassment
• The harassment was due to race, and
• The harassment was so severe or pervasive that it altered a term, condition, or privilege of his employment and created an abusive work environment.

In this case, the Tenth Circuit explained, the issue was whether the alleged harassment was severe or pervasive enough to negatively affect the work environment and create an abusive environment.

Court issues warning before turning to facts of case

First, the court offered a word of warning. It said the employee’s allegations, accepted as true, “paint an unflattering portrait” of the employer’s training program.

Such “messaging could promote racial discrimination and stereotypes within the workplace” and “could encourage racial preferences in hiring, firing and promotion decisions,” the Tenth Circuit opined.

Moreover, the court stressed, any employee who objected to the messaging “risk being individually targeted for discriminatory treatment – especially if employers explicitly or implicitly reward discriminatory outcomes.”

Lack of concrete evidence dooms claim

Turning to the matter at hand, the court said that the employee had to plausibly allege the harassment was objectively severe or pervasive. He did not do so, the court determined.

The employee claimed he was “forced to resign” due to the training but he did not provide any context about “why or how he was forced to resign.” Specifically, he did not include details about “what he experienced in the workplace due to the DEI training – particularly his interactions with supervisors or co-workers,” the court said.

In addition, he did not allege that “the training occurred more than once” or that “supervisors threatened to punish or otherwise discipline employees who failed to complete” the training.

While the employee’s complaint asserted “the training could lead to safety or security issues because of the nature of the workplace – a state prison,” the court said that concern was merely “speculative.”

The employee did not show that the training was severe or pervasive enough to create a hostile work environment, the Tenth Circuit held. It affirmed the district court’s ruling in the employer’s favor.

Young v. Colorado Dep’t of Corrections, No. 23-1063, 2024 U.S. App. LEXIS 5814 (10th Cir. 3/11/24).