Former MetLife Executive’s Case Over Sexist Duties Splits Court

A federal appeals court appeared divided over reviving a former MetLife Group Inc. executive’s sex discrimination case alleging she was required to perform stereotypically feminine administrative tasks because she’s a woman.

During oral argument Thursday at the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, Chief Judge William Pryor suggested the assignments Marybeth Lukie attributed to gender bias were infrequently doled out and were professional rather than administrative. Lukie also didn’t complain about being assigned feminized work at the time, he said.

“What she was saying was: ‘this is in addition to my other work and its an unfair distribution, I’m getting more extra work,’” said Pryor, a George W. Bush appointee. “And it’s not tied to sex.”

The two other judges on the panel—Robin Rosenbaum, an Obama appointee, and Nancy Abudu, a Biden appointee—appeared troubled about the gender dynamics of some of Lukie’s assignments.

The circuit court’s ruling on Lukie’s sexist division of labor claim could clarify Eleventh Circuit law on whether such treatment qualifies as an adverse employment action that can support a sexual discrimination claim. She sued under Florida’s anti-bias law, which is modeled after Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which likewise bars sex discrimination in the workplace.

Disputes about what employer decisions are actionable under anti-discrimination law have been percolating in the federal circuit courts in recent years. The US Supreme Court earlier this month heard oral argument in a case about job transfers, signaling that it would rule that workers could bring Title VII claims over them even if they didn’t trigger a loss in pay or other material harm.

Lukie, who worked as a vice president in MetLife’s enterprise risk group, alleged the company required her to perform demeaning, feminized secretarial tasks, such as taking notes in meetings and preparing documents.

A federal judge in the Middle District of Florida threw out Lukie’s claim about work assignments because she didn’t show any economic impact.

Professional or Administrative?

Lukie also appealed the judge’s decision to toss her claims that MetLife paid her less than male vice presidents and retaliated against her for complaining about bias. But the Eleventh Circuit largely ignored the retaliation claim and showed little support for reviving her pay discrimination allegation.

Rosenbaum asked Lukie’s attorney, Thomas Burns of Burns PA, about how work assignments can be sex bias.

“Is your point that, for example, if only the women in an organization were required every day to get coffee for the men, regardless of their other job duties, and if a man replaced the woman in the position and was not then required to get coffee, that that would change the conditions of work in such a way as to be discriminatory?” she asked.

Burns said yes, then Pryor cut in to point out that Lukie wasn’t required to get coffee. When Burns responded that Lukie was responsible for ordering pizza for people, Pryor said ordering pizza is different than serving coffee.

One weakness in Lukie’s claim about feminized tasks was that she conceded that some of them couldn’t have been done by an administrative staffer and needed to be done by somebody at her level, Rosenbaum said.

Pryor also emphasized that point, saying that taking notes at meetings was a “professional responsibility.”

MetLife’s lawyer, Christopher Parlo of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, said people in the courtroom were taking notes and that he does that when he’s the junior lawyer in meetings.

“It’s not about you, it’s not about people in the back, it’s about Ms. Lukie who’s arguing that she was assigned these tasks,” Abudu said.

The case is Lukie v. MetLife Group, Inc., 11th Cir., No. 22-10967, oral argument held 12/14/23.