"n-word' doesn't make workplace hostile - Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s notable opinions, votes

Amy Barrett is a devotee of the stiff upper lip school it seems. 
Just let the insults roll off you.  - GWC
A look at Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s notable opinions, votes

RACE DISCRIMINATION IN THE WORKPLACE

Barrett wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel in 2019 that upheld the dismissal of a workplace discrimination lawsuit by Terry Smith, a Black Illinois transportation employee who sued after he was fired. Smith’s claims included that he was called a racial slur by supervisor Lloyd Colbert.

“The n-word is an egregious racial epithet,” Barrett wrote in Smith v. Illinois Department of Transportation. “That said, Smith can’t win simply by proving that the word was uttered. He must also demonstrate that Colbert’s use of this word altered the conditions of his employment and created a hostile or abusive working environment.”

Barrett went on to say that Smith “introduced no evidence that Colbert’s use of the n-word changed his subjective experience of the workplace. To be sure, Smith testified that his time at the Department caused him psychological distress. But that was for reasons that predated his run-in with Colbert and had nothing to do with his race. His tenure at the Department was rocky from the outset because of his poor track record.”

A possible colleague of Barrett’s took a different view on racial slurs in 2013. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, then serving as a federal appeals court judge in Washington, D.C, said one utterance was enough. “But, in my view, being called the n-word by a supervisor ... suffices by itself to establish a racially hostile work environment. That epithet has been labeled, variously, a term that ‘sums up . . . all the bitter years of insult and struggle in America,’ ‘pure anathema to African-Americans,’ and ’probably the most offensive word in English,” Kavanaugh wrote. “No other word in the English language so powerfully or instantly calls to mind our country’s long and brutal struggle to overcome racism and discrimination against African-Americans. In short, the case law demonstrates that a single, sufficiently severe incident may create a hostile work environment actionable” under federal anti-discrimination laws.