## Facts

- Lisa Ann Burns worked for McGregor Electronic Industries, Inc. during three separate periods between 1980 and 1984.
- Burns alleged repeated sexual harassment by the company owner and her supervisor, Paul Oslac, including unwelcome sexual advances, showing pornographic material, and asking her to pose nude.
- Burns alleged co-workers made derogatory and sexually explicit remarks and engaged in workplace hostility, including circulating a petition against her.
- Burns complained to supervisors, but the harassment allegedly continued despite her complaints.
- Burns left employment, alleging the ongoing harassment made working conditions intolerable and amounted to constructive discharge.
- At trial, the district court relied in part on Burns’s past nude modeling to doubt her claim that the workplace conduct was unwelcome or offensive.

## Issues

1. Whether the district court erred by using Burns’s prior nude modeling to discredit her testimony that the workplace conduct was unwelcome.
2. Whether the district court misapplied Title VII’s hostile work environment standard by finding the conduct insufficiently severe or pervasive.
3. Whether the district court improperly evaluated the evidence as isolated incidents rather than under the totality of the circumstances and cumulative impact.

## Decision

- The Eighth Circuit reversed the judgment for the employer and remanded for further proceedings.
- The court held the district court improperly discounted Burns’s credibility and the “welcomeness” element based on her past nude modeling.
- The court held the district court erred by fragmenting the evidence into discrete episodes instead of evaluating the work environment as a whole and the accumulated effect of repeated harassment.
- The court stated the remand was not a directive to enter judgment for Burns; the district court was to reassess the evidence under the correct legal framework.

## Legal Principles

- A hostile work environment exists under Title VII when harassment is sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of employment and create an abusive working environment, evaluated from the standpoint of a reasonable person.
- The hostile-environment inquiry requires consideration of the totality of the circumstances; factfinders should not parse each incident in isolation where the cumulative impact may exceed the sum of individual episodes.
- An employee’s prior nude modeling or other past sexual expression is generally irrelevant to whether alleged workplace sexual conduct was unwelcome and should not be used to negate “welcomeness” or to discredit a harassment claim.
- Where a hostile environment is shown, the factfinder must also consider whether the conditions were so intolerable that a reasonable person would feel compelled to resign (constructive discharge), based on the overall environment.

## Conclusion

The Eighth Circuit reversed and remanded because the district court relied on an impermissible credibility rationale tied to Burns’s past nude modeling and because it failed to evaluate the alleged harassment cumulatively under the totality-of-the-circumstances framework governing Title VII hostile work environment claims.


Burns v. McGregor Elec. Indus., Inc., 955 F.2d 559 (8th Cir. 1992)