Arizona ex rel. Horne v. The Geo Group, 2016 WL 945634 (9th Cir. 2016)

Alice Hancock was employed by Geo as a correctional officer at the Arizona State Prison. Geo contracts with the Arizona Department of Corrections to maintain and operate two facilities in the state. Hancock filed a charge of discrimination and harassment based on sex and also alleging retaliation. After concluding its investigation, the Arizona Civil Rights Division and the EEOC issued a reasonable cause determination, substantiating Hancock’s allegations, and subsequently filed a class action lawsuit. The district court granted summary judgment to the employer, but the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed, relying upon Mach Mining, LLC v. EEOC, 135 S. Ct. 1645 (2015) and holding that the EEOC’s pre-suit conciliation efforts are subject to limited judicial review and were sufficient. The Court held that the EEOC is not required to conciliate on an individual basis prior to bringing a class action and that the proper starting date of the class action was 300 days prior to the filing of Hancock’s charge (not the date of the filing of the reasonable cause determination). The Court also held that the district court had improperly dismissed another employee’s (Sofia Hines) claims of a hostile environment, which allegedly included unwanted comments about her breasts, the grabbing of her breast on one occasion, an unwanted “spanking on her butt,” and several unwanted sexually explicit comments directed at her. See also Baughn v. Department of Forestry, 2016 WL 1386040 (Cal. Ct. App. 2016) (former employer’s anti-SLAPP motion to dismiss union’s challenge to employer’s termination of alleged sexual harasser was properly denied on the ground that the action did not arise from protected speech).