Nicholas Barnes worked as a contract coordinator at East Alabama Medical Center Foundation's healthcare facility in Opelika, Alabama. Beginning in February 2023, his direct supervisor, Ursula Means, subjected him to conduct he described as constant harassment: touching his shoulder and bumping into him in the storeroom, telling him to stop wearing formal clothing and wear scrubs instead, commenting on his appearance and his pretty face, suggesting that EAMC women liked him, and threatening that she or her son and nephew would physically harm him. Barnes testified the harassment drove him to resign in February 2024.
U.S. District Judge Emily C. Marks, adopting a magistrate judge's recommendation with modifications, granted summary judgment to EAMC on both the hostile work environment and retaliation claims and dismissed the case with prejudice.
On the hostile work environment claim, the court assumed without deciding that Means' conduct was based on Barnes' sex and that Barnes subjectively perceived it as harassing. The dispositive question was whether the conduct was objectively severe or pervasive under the four-factor Eleventh Circuit framework: frequency, severity, whether the conduct was physically threatening or humiliating, and whether it unreasonably interfered with job performance.
The court held that even crediting Barnes' testimony that harassment occurred constantly, the frequency factor weighed only slightly in his favor and could not compensate for the absence of the other factors. On severity, the court compared Means' conduct to conduct the Eleventh Circuit had already held insufficient — including a supervisor ordering an employee to sit near him after tightening his pants around his crotch, standing close enough that the employee could feel his breath on the back of her neck, and giving four compliments about the employee's looks or smell — and concluded no reasonable jury could find Means' conduct more severe. On the physical-threat-or-humiliation factor, the court distinguished the Eleventh Circuit's recent Copeland decision, where the harasser physically pushed the plaintiff and followed him outside while armed, and held that Means' comments about whooping Barnes were offensive utterances rather than objectively threatening conduct. On job performance, the court noted that Barnes conceded his performance never slipped, that the timecard issue was resolved without disciplinary consequences, and that his mistaken belief he could not apply for a promotion did not affect his current role.
The retaliation claim failed at the adverse-employment-action element. Barnes argued that Means blocked him from applying for a promotion and deliberately withheld timecard approvals to get him fired, but the court held that an employee's mistaken belief he cannot apply for a promotion does not constitute an adverse action, and that the timecard issue — resolved without any discipline, pay reduction, or other consequence — similarly fell short. The court also rejected constructive discharge, holding that the conduct, taken individually or collectively, did not meet the objective standard requiring conditions so intolerable that a reasonable employee would feel compelled to resign. The court further reviewed the record under a convincing-mosaic theory and held that the circumstantial evidence, including a coworker's warning that Means wanted Barnes gone, was insufficient to permit a reasonable inference of retaliation.