06-07-2018
Coates Electrical & Instrumentation hired James Allen Evans, a black man, as an apprentice electrician. Shortly after his hire, Mr. Evans was asked by his supervisor to retrieve something from the toolshed. However, when the project manager saw him, he wanted to know why Mr. Evans was in the shed. Mr. Evans explained. The project manager responded, “Boy, you work for me.” Mr. Evans asked that he not be referred to as “boy,” but the manager continued to use the term, becoming more angry and aggressive. When Mr. Evans let the manager know that he was going to make a complaint of race discrimination, the manager fired him. He said “Boy, take off that harness. You are out of here. You’re fired.”Mr. Evans filed a lawsuit against Coates, claiming that the term “boy” was discriminatory as was his termination for objecting to the racial slur.
A federal district court in Utah focused on whether the word “boy” reflected racial animus such that a reasonable jury could conclude that Mr. Evan’s termination was discriminatory. In Ash v. Tyson Foods (2006), the U.S. Supreme Court held that “context, inflection,