A jury in Michigan recently awarded a Black television minister $9.2 million in compensatory damages and $51 million in punitive damages against his employer, television broadcaster The Word Network, Church of the Word. The minister/plaintiff asserted that his employer discriminated against him because of his race, subjected him to a hostile work environment and retaliated against him for opposing racial discrimination and harassment. Importantly, unlike Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, race discrimination claims under Section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act do not have a punitive damages cap.
The case focused on a meme depicting the station owner wearing a white fur coat and hat (purportedly to give the impression of a pimp) surrounded by Black ministers who appeared on the television network. The minister/plaintiff alleged at trial that the owner of the station frequently shared the meme and repeatedly made racially offensive comments after the minister/plaintiff asked him to stop. The minister/plaintiff asserted that the station owner mocked his height and called him Tattoo (a reference to a character from a television show broadcast in the 1970s).
The television network argued that the owner and the minister/plaintiff had a decades long relationship that often included joking and playful insults. For example, the station owner alleged that the minister/plaintiff frequently joked about the owner’s Jewish heritage and made comments about his clothing and money.
The case highlights some important lessons that we frequently mention to clients: (1) litigation is uncertain and an angry jury can punish employers who they perceive as cavalier or uncaring; (2) “we were only joking with each other” is not usually a winning defense to a claim for unlawful harassment; and (3) take every allegation of unlawful harassment seriously, and make sure the behavior stops after the complaint is made.
