Tyler Copeland is a transgender man who began working for the Georgia Department of Corrections around 2014. At the time, he identified as female, which was his assigned gender at birth. A year after beginning his career with the Department, Copeland was transferred to Rogers State Prison (RSP), a medium-security prison in southeast Georgia. Two years later, he was promoted to sergeant.
While working at RSP, Copeland began to transition his gender medically and socially from female to male. He underwent hormone replacement therapy, obtained a legal name change, and decided to live openly as a man. This decision required him to disclose his gender identity at work. Copeland received a phone call from RSP’s HR director Betsy Thomas, who asked if Copeland had surgery or planned to do so. Copeland told Thomas that it was not her business and heard people laughing on the line. Copeland had assumed that the phone call would be private and concluded that he “was now a laughing matter in the HR Department.”
Copeland’s colleagues bullied him throughout the year following this meeting. RSP maintained a prison-wide radio system and all employees carried radios and could hear every transmission. Copeland’s coworkers began ending their transmissions by calling him “ma’am,” understanding that the whole institution could hear. As a sergeant, Copeland had a call sign, so there was never any need to address him with a gendered pronoun nor an honorific. This occurred multiple times daily and came from both subordinates and supervisors. One time, after a supervisor addressed him over the radio as a woman, Copeland heard subordinates down the hall laughing at him.
Copeland also experienced face-to-face harassment at RSP. For example, one coworker commented that Copeland must have a “dildo in her pants.” His direct supervisor called him “baby girl.” Cafeteria staff members joked about transgender people and their genitalia in front of inmates. A nurse on the medical staff told Copeland that “she was not going to call him sir” because “that wasn’t who he was.”
Over the course of the year following his meeting with HR, Copeland frequently and directly requested that his colleagues refer to him as a man and use male pronouns when addressing him. He faced insubordination from subordinates, was reassigned to the night shift, and was denied time off to attend long-scheduled medical appointments. Copeland sought alternative employment, but each prospective employer rejected him without providing a reason; Copeland suspected that RSP employees provided poor character references. Copeland reported his concerns to HR and other Department offices but was generally ignored. He informed the entire chain of command at RSP of his harassment.
During an overnight shift, as Copeland was entering the prison, another officer named Sheila Holland blocked the doorway, and challenged him to a fight. Holland told Copeland that she was offended by his transgender identity because she was proud to be a woman. Days later, Holland shoved Copeland from behind as he left RSP, drawing laughter from another sergeant, which was captured on surveillance cameras. As Copeland walked to his car, Holland circled him in an armed perimeter vehicle while carrying a pistol and parked behind him. Copeland feared for his life. He reported this incident, but Holland was cleared of misconduct after an internal investigation.
Copeland sued the Department for subjecting him to a hostile work environment in violation of Title VII. The Department successfully moved for summary judgment, and Copeland appealed. The 11th Circuit reversed, finding that Copeland had adequately pled a hostile work environment claim. The focus of the Court’s analysis was whether Copeland’s harassment was “severe or pervasive” enough to constitute a hostile workplace. In doing so, the Court considered (1) the frequency of the harassment; (2) the severity of the harassment; (3) whether the harassment was physically threatening or humiliating; and (4) whether the harassment unreasonably interfered with job performance.
The Court found that although there was no brightline rule as to when harassment was sufficiently frequent to violate Title VII, Copeland’s harassment was clearly frequent. His allegation that he was misgendered multiple times each day on the RSP radio system was enough, notwithstanding all the other individual incidents. The harassment was also severe for several reasons: it persisted despite Copeland’s repeated attempts to stop it; it came from supervisors as well as subordinates; and it occurred in the context of a prison, where the harassment could signal to inmates that Copeland was “fair game.” The Court found the harassment to be both physically threatening and humiliating. It focused on the incident with Holland in concluding that Copeland faced legitimate fears for his physical safety. The harassment was humiliating because it occurred often in the presence of coworkers, who laughed in response. It was also humiliating because much of the harassment involved jokes and speculation about Copeland’s genitalia. Finally, the Court found that the harassment affected Copeland’s job performance, because he alleged that subordinates defied his orders. For example, one subordinate called Copeland “it” and “ma’am” and refused orders to serve disciplinary paperwork on inmates. Holland refused to give Copeland keys needed to transfer inmates out of RSP after their confrontation. Finding that the lower court erred in determining that Copeland’s harassment was neither pervasive nor severe, the Court reversed and allowed Copeland to proceed to trial on the hostile workplace claim.
Copeland v. Georgia Department of Corrections, No. 22-13073, 2024 WL 1316677 (11th Cir., 2024).