Supreme Court declines to hear case involving racial slur in workplace

Washington — The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a legal battle involving one of the most offensive words in the English language, spurning a case raising whether its utterance in the workplace even one time creates a hostile work environment.

The justices turned away an appeal from Robert Collier, a Texas man who sued the hospital where he was employed. Collier said supervisors ignored complaints about a carving of the N-word on the wall of an elevator he and other hospital workers often used. In rejecting the case, a ruling from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in favor of the hospital remains intact. The question in the dispute was whether a single use, or "mere utterance," of a racial epithet like the N-word gives rise to a hostile work environment under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits workplace discrimination on the basis of race.