CLARK COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT v. BREEDEN

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Syllabus
CLARK COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT v. BREEDEN
on petition for writ of certiorari to the united
states court of appeals for the ninth circuit
No. 00–866. Decided April 23, 2001
At a meeting with respondent and a male employee to review job
applicants’ psychological evaluation reports, respondent’s male super-
visor read aloud a sexually explicit remark that one applicant had
made to a co-worker, looked at respondent, and stated, “I don’t know
what that means.” The other employee replied, “Well, I’ll tell you
later,” and both men chuckled. Respondent complained about the
comment to the offending supervisor and other officials of their em-
ployer, petitioner Clark County School District. Pursuant to Title VII
of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, she subsequently filed a 42 U. S. C.
§ 2000e–3(a) retaliation claim against petitioner, asserting that she was
punished for these complaints and also for filing charges against peti-
tioner with the Nevada Equal Rights Commission and the Equal Em-
ployment Opportunity Commission and for filing the present suit. The
District Court granted petitioner summary judgment, but the Ninth
Circuit reversed.
Held: Respondent’s claims are insufficient to withstand a summary judg-
ment motion. No one could reasonably believe that the incident of
which respondent complained violated Title VII. Sexual harassment is
actionable under Title VII only if it is so severe or pervasive as to alter
the conditions of the victim’s employment and create an abusive working
environment. Faragher v. Boca Raton, 524 U. S. 775, 786. Simple
teasing, offhand comments, and isolated incidents (unless extremely se-
rious) will not amount to discriminatory changes in employment terms
and conditions. The actions of respondent’s supervisor and co-worker
are at worst an isolated incident that cannot remotely be considered
“extremely serious.” Regarding respondent’s claim that she was puni-
tively transferred for filing charges and the present suit, she failed to
show the requisite causal connection between her protected activities
and the transfer. Petitioner did not implement the transfer until 20
months after respondent filed her charges, and it was contemplating the
transfer before it learned of her suit.
Certiorari granted; 232 F. 3d 893, reversed.

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Per Curiam.
Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 78 Stat.
255, as amended, 42 U. S. C. § 2000e–3(a), it is unlawful
“for an employer to discriminate against any of his em-
ployees . . . because [the employee] has opposed any prac-
tice made an unlawful employment practice by [Title VII],
or because [the employee] has made a charge, testified,
assisted, or participated in any manner in an investigation,
proceeding, or hearing under [Title VII].” In 1997, respond-
ent filed a § 2000e–3(a) retaliation claim against petitioner
Clark County School District. The claim as eventually
amended alleged that petitioner had taken two separate ad-
verse employment actions against her in response to two dif-
ferent protected activities in which she had engaged. The
District Court granted summary judgment to petitioner,
No. CV–S–97–365–DWH(RJJ) (D. Nev., Feb. 9, 1999), but a
panel of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed
over the dissent of Judge Fernandez, No. 99–15522, 2000 WL
991821 (July 19, 2000) (per curiam) (unpublished), judgt.
order reported at 232 F. 3d 893. We grant the writ of certio-
rari and reverse.
On October 21, 1994, respondent’s male supervisor met
with respondent and another male employee to review the
psychological evaluation reports of four job applicants. The
report for one of the applicants disclosed that the applicant
had once commented to a co-worker, “I hear making love
to you is like making love to the Grand Canyon.” Brief in
Opposition 3. At the meeting respondent’s supervisor read
the comment aloud, looked at respondent and stated, “I don’t
know what that means.” Ibid. The other employee then
said, “Well, I’ll tell you later,” and both men chuckled. Ibid.
Respondent later complained about the comment to the of-
fending employee, to Assistant Superintendent George Ann
Rice, the employee’s supervisor, and to another assistant

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superintendent of petitioner. Her first claim of retaliation
asserts that she was punished for these complaints.
The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has applied
§ 2000e–3(a) to protect employee “oppos[ition]” not just to
practices that are actually “made . . . unlawful” by Title VII,
but also to practices that the employee could reasonably be-
lieve were unlawful. 2000 WL 991821, at *1 (stating that
respondent’s opposition was protected “if she had a reason-
able, good faith belief that the incident involving the sexually
explicit remark constituted unlawful sexual harassment”);
Trent v. Valley Electric Assn. Inc., 41 F. 3d 524, 526 (CA9
1994). We have no occasion to rule on the propriety of this
interpretation, because even assuming it is correct, no one
could reasonably believe that the incident recounted above
violated Title VII.
Title VII forbids actions taken on the basis of sex that
“discriminate against any individual with respect to his com-
pensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment.”
42 U. S. C. § 2000e–2(a)(1). Just three Terms ago, we reiter-
ated, what was plain from our previous decisions, that sexual
harassment is actionable under Title VII only if it is “so ‘se-
vere or pervasive’ as to ‘alter the conditions of [the victim’s]
employment and create an abusive working environment.’ ”
Faragher v. Boca Raton, 524 U. S. 775, 786 (1998) (quoting
Meritor Savings Bank, FSB v. Vinson, 477 U. S. 57, 67
(1986) (some internal quotation marks omitted)). See also
Burlington Industries, Inc. v. Ellerth, 524 U. S. 742, 752
(1998) (Only harassing conduct that is “severe or pervasive”
can produce a “constructive alteratio[n] in the terms or
conditions of employment”); Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore
Services, Inc., 523 U. S. 75, 81 (1998) (Title VII “forbids only
behavior so objectively offensive as to alter the ‘conditions’
of the victim’s employment”). Workplace conduct is not
measured in isolation; instead, “whether an environment is
sufficiently hostile or abusive” must be judged “by ‘looking
at all the circumstances,’ including the ‘frequency of the dis-

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criminatory conduct; its severity; whether it is physically
threatening or humiliating, or a mere offensive utterance;
and whether it unreasonably interferes with an employee’s
work performance.’ ” Faragher v. Boca Raton, supra, at
787–788 (quoting Harris v. Forklift Systems, Inc., 510 U. S.
17, 23 (1993)). Hence, “[a] recurring point in [our] opinions is
that simple teasing, offhand comments, and isolated incidents
(unless extremely serious) will not amount to discrimina-
tory changes in the ‘terms and conditions of employment.’ ”
Faragher v. Boca Raton, supra, at 788 (citation and internal
quotation marks omitted).
No reasonable person could have believed that the single
incident recounted above violated Title VII’s standard. The
ordinary terms and conditions of respondent’s job required
her to review the sexually explicit statement in the course
of screening job applicants. Her co-workers who partici-
pated in the hiring process were subject to the same require-
ment, and indeed, in the District Court respondent “con-
ceded that it did not bother or upset her” to read the
statement in the file. App. to Pet. for Cert. 15 (District
Court opinion). Her supervisor’s comment, made at a meet-
ing to review the application, that he did not know what the
statement meant; her co-worker’s responding comment; and
the chuckling of both are at worst an “isolated inciden[t]”
that cannot remotely be considered “extremely serious,” as
our cases require, Faragher v. Boca Raton, supra, at 788.
The holding of the Court of Appeals to the contrary must
be reversed.
Besides claiming that she was punished for complaining to
petitioner’s personnel about the alleged sexual harassment,
respondent also claimed that she was punished for filing
charges against petitioner with the Nevada Equal Rights
Commission and the Equal Employment Opportunity Com-
mission (EEOC) and for filing the present suit. Respondent
filed her lawsuit on April 1, 1997; on April 10, 1997, respond-
ent’s supervisor, Assistant Superintendent Rice, “mentioned

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to Allin Chandler, Executive Director of plaintiff ’s union,
that she was contemplating transferring plaintiff to the
position of Director of Professional Development Education,”
App. to Pet. for Cert. 11–12 (District Court opinion); and
this transfer was “carried through” in May, Brief in Opposi-
tion 8. In order to show, as her defense against summary
judgment required, the existence of a causal connection be-
tween her protected activities and the transfer, respondent
“relie[d] wholly on the temporal proximity of the filing of her
complaint on April 1, 1997 and Rice’s statement to plaintiff ’s
union representative on April 10, 1997 that she was consider-
ing transferring plaintiff to the [new] position.” App. to Pet.
for Cert. 21–22 (District Court opinion). The District
Court, however, found that respondent did not serve peti-
tioner with the summons and complaint until April 11, 1997,
one day after Rice had made the statement, and Rice filed
an affidavit stating that she did not become aware of the
lawsuit until after April 11, a claim that respondent did not
challenge. Hence, the court concluded, respondent “ha[d]
not shown that any causal connection exists between her
protected activities and the adverse employment decision.”
Id., at 21.
The Court of Appeals reversed, relying on two facts: The
EEOC had issued a right-to-sue letter to respondent three
months before Rice announced she was contemplating the
transfer, and the actual transfer occurred one month after
Rice learned of respondent’s suit. 2000 WL 991821, at *3.
The latter fact is immaterial in light of the fact that peti-
tioner concededly was contemplating the transfer before it
learned of the suit. Employers need not suspend previously
planned transfers upon discovering that a Title VII suit has
been filed, and their proceeding along lines previously con-
templated, though not yet definitively determined, is no evi-
dence whatever of causality.
As for the right-to-sue letter: Respondent did not rely on
that letter in the District Court and did not mention it in

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her opening brief on appeal. Her demonstration of causality
all along had rested upon the connection between the trans-
fer and the filing of her lawsuit—to which connection the
letter was irrelevant. When, however, petitioner’s answer-
ing brief in the Court of Appeals demonstrated conclusively
the lack of causation between the filing of respondent’s law-
suit and Rice’s decision, respondent mentioned the letter for
the first time in her reply brief, Reply Brief in No. 99–15522
(CA9) pp. 9–10. The Ninth Circuit’s opinion did not adopt
respondent’s utterly implausible suggestion that the EEOC’s
issuance of a right-to-sue letter—an action in which the em-
ployee takes no part—is a protected activity of the employee,
see 42 U. S. C. § 2000e–3(a). Rather, the opinion suggests
that the letter provided petitioner with its first notice of
respondent’s charge before the EEOC, and hence allowed
the inference that the transfer proposal made three months
later was petitioner’s reaction to the charge. See 2000 WL
991821, at *3. This will not do.
First, there is no indication that Rice even knew about the
right-to-sue letter when she proposed transferring respond-
ent. And second, if one presumes she knew about it, one
must also presume that she (or her predecessor) knew almost
two years earlier about the protected action (filing of the
EEOC complaint) that the letter supposedly disclosed. (The
complaint had been filed on August 23, 1995, and both Title
VII and its implementing regulations require that an em-
ployer be given notice within 10 days of filing, 42 U. S. C.
§§ 2000e–5(b), (e)(1); 29 CFR § 1601.14 (2000).) The cases
that accept mere temporal proximity between an employer’s
knowledge of protected activity and an adverse employment
action as sufficient evidence of causality to establish a prima
facie case uniformly hold that the temporal proximity must
be “very close,” O’Neal v. Ferguson Constr. Co., 237 F. 3d
1248, 1253 (CA10 2001). See, e. g., Richmond v. Oneok, Inc.,
120 F. 3d 205, 209 (CA10 1997) (3-month period insufficient);
Hughes v. Derwinski, 967 F. 2d 1168, 1174–1175 (CA7 1992)

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(4-month period insufficient). Action taken (as here) 20
months later suggests, by itself, no causality at all.
In short, neither the grounds that respondent presented
to the District Court, nor the ground she added on appeal,
nor even the ground the Court of Appeals developed on its
own, sufficed to establish a dispute substantial enough to
withstand the motion for summary judgment. The District
Court’s granting of that motion was correct. The judgment
of the Court of Appeals is reversed.
It is so ordered.