WASHINGTON – Robert Collier says that during the seven years he worked as an operating room aide at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, white nurses called him and other Black employees “boy." Management ignored two large swastikas painted on a storage room wall.
And for six months, he regularly rode an elevator with the N-word carved into a wall. Collier ultimately sued the hospital, but lower courts dismissed his case.
Now, however, at a private conference Thursday, the Supreme Court will consider for the first time whether to hear his case.
Focusing on the elevator graffiti, Collier is asking the justices to decide whether a single use of the N-word in the workplace can create a hostile work environment, giving an employee the ability