By: AgencyEquity.com
An Alabama life insurance agent endured offensive racial remarks from a fellow agent with whom she worked. Were the insurance carrier they represented and their agency responsible?
The agent, an African American woman, had posted her resume on a job search website and the carrier contacted her in spring 2018. Two men, at least one of whom was white, interviewed her for the position. She got the impression that the white man would be her immediate supervisor. Actually, he was an independent contractor of the carrier’s and an agent with an affiliated agency. The interview was apparently successful because the same day she signed an independent agent contract with them. It stated that she was an independent contractor and not an employee of the carrier.
She attended three days of training on how to obtain sales leads and sell the carrier’s products. They gave her a quite modest production goal and no requirement as to the number of daily hours she was to spend selling. She began traveling with the man who had interviewed her to observe him selling life insurance. In addition, he approved and sometimes rejected her sales leads. According to her, he rejected leads in the belief that they would not bring in enough premium to justify the time spent.
After two or three weeks of traveling with him, she claimed, he also began using racial slurs and making racially and sexually inappropriate jokes in the car and in the agency’s office out of which they worked. After about four months of this, she complained to the head of the agency. After that, she worked with someone else within the agency, was never asked to work with the man again, never spoke with him when she saw him, and never again received harassment or inappropriate behavior from him.
Nevertheless, a month later she stopped selling for the carrier. The agency head claimed that he offered to report the behavior to the carrier and she declined. Instead, she sued the carrier and the agency in August 2019 for violations of the federal Civil Rights Act and other federal and state laws. Proceedings were evidently delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, as it was not until March 2021 that the carrier and agency asked the federal trial court for summary judgment in their favor. “Summary judgment” is a ruling based solely on the law when the facts are undisputed.
The trial court granted their request on all the complaints involving federal law and refused to rule on the state law claims because they were outside the court’s jurisdiction. She appealed on her claim that the companies violated a federal law by placing her in a racially hostile work environment.
In August 2023, the appellate court upheld the ruling, finding:
- The man who harassed her was her co-worker, not her supervisor. While she considered him her immediate supervisor, he lacked the power to take any employment actions regarding her, adverse or otherwise. Also, there was no evidence that the carrier authorized him to interview her, train her, or approve and disapprove her leads.
- The carrier and agency could be held liable only if they knew or should have known about the harassment and did nothing to stop it. Instead, the agency took action immediately after her complaint and prevented him from working with her again. Further, she never reported the problem to the carrier; they could not have known about conduct of which no one told them.
The agency appears to have handled this situation appropriately. They were told of a problem with one of their producers and they took quick remedial action. The fact that the complaining agent left only one month after making the complaint and only a few months into her career raises questions as to whether she may have chosen the wrong line of work for her.
An agency faced with a situation like this should consider modeling this agency’s behavior. When two individuals within the organization conflict, quickly separate them and make reasonable accommodations to prevent re-occurrence. That will likely produce the favorable outcome this agency got.
