Amaani Lyle, an African American woman, took a job as a scriptwriters’ assistant at Warner Brothers Television Productions. She worked for the writers of Friends, a popular, adult-oriented television series.

One of her essential job duties was to type detailed notes for the scriptwriters during brainstorming sessions in which they discussed jokes, dialogue, and story lines. The writers then combed through Lyle’s notes after the meetings for script material.

During the meetings, the three male scriptwriters told lewd and vulgar jokes and made sexually explicit comments and gestures. They often talked about their personal sexual experiences and fantasies, and some of these conversations were later used in episodes of Friends. During the meetings, Lyle never complained that she found the writers’ conduct offensive.

After four months, Lyle was fired because she could not type fast enough to keep up with the writers’

conversations during the meetings. She filed a suit against Warner Brothers alleging sexual harassment and claiming that her termination was based on racial discrimination. Using the information presented in the chapter, answer the following questions.

1. Would Lyle’s claim of racial discrimination be for intentional (disparate-treatment) or unintentional (disparate-impact) discrimination? Explain.

2. Can Lyle establish a prima facie case of racial discrimination? Why or why not?

3. When she was hired, Lyle was told that typing speed was extremely important to her position.

At the time, she maintained that she could type eighty words per minute, so she was not given a typing test. It later turned out that Lyle could type only fifty words per minute. What impact might typing speed have on Lyle’s lawsuit?

4. Lyle’s sexual harassment claim was based on the hostile work environment created by the writers’ sexually offensive conduct at meetings that she was required to attend. The writers, however, argued that their behavior was essential to the “creative process” of writing Friends, a show that routinely contained sexual innuendos and adult humor. Which defense discussed in the chapter might Warner Brothers assert using this argument?