Nieves-Borges v. El Conquistador P'ship, 936 F.3d 1

Nieves worked at El Conquistador Resort from 1993 to 2015 and alleges 13 years (2001–2014) of repeated same-sex sexual harassment by HR director Luis Álvarez (touching, staring, invitations), with corroborating witness testimony for some episodes.
In August–September 2014 Nieves was reassigned and then filed an internal complaint (9/30/2014) and an EEOC charge (2/12/2015) describing the long-term pattern; Álvarez left the resort in late 2014 and the resort conducted an internal investigation.
Between January and July 2015 Nieves faced discipline (suspension, written warning) and was terminated in July 2015 for allegedly falsifying a sick-day report; Nieves alleged these were retaliatory for his complaints.
The district court struck Nieves's lengthy opposition for Local Rule 56 violations, treated most defendant facts as uncontested, limited Title VII timeliness to incidents within 300 days, and granted summary judgment to the resort on all claims.
The First Circuit affirmed dismissal of the retaliation claim (no causation) but vacated/ remanded the hostile-work-environment ruling because the district court erred in limiting consideration to only 2014 incidents and likely misapplied legal standards for sex-based motive and severe-or-pervasive inquiry.

Issue	Nieves's Argument	El Conquistador's Argument	Held
Timeliness / continuing-violation	2014 incidents anchor a continuing hostile environment; earlier incidents may be considered	Only incidents within 300 days of EEOC filing are actionable; earlier incidents time-barred	Vacated district court: one timely act may anchor prior acts; full period may be considered on remand
Hostile work environment — sex-based motive	Pattern of sexually charged conduct (touching, staring, invitations) permits inference of gender-based motive	No evidence of sex-motivated conduct (no explicit propositions or overt sexual comments)	Vacated: district court may have required too much explicitness; jury could infer sex-based motive; reassess on remand
Hostile work environment — severe or pervasive	Series of repeated, cumulative acts over years can be severe or pervasive even if individual acts are tolerable	2014 acts alone are not severe or pervasive; district court concluded conduct not egregious enough	Vacated: district court erred by focusing on 2014 only and by treating severity and pervasiveness conjunctively; reassess on remand
Retaliation — causation	Transfer and later discipline were retaliatory and temporally connected to complaints	Transfer decision preceded internal complaint announcement; non-retaliatory, business reasons for discipline/termination	Affirmed: no causal link for the transfer; summary judgment proper on retaliation claim

Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Servs., Inc., 523 U.S. 75 (1998) (same-sex sexual harassment actionable; motive can be inferred)
Nat'l R.R. Passenger Corp. v. Morgan, 536 U.S. 101 (2002) (timely act lets court consider whole hostile-environment period)
Roy v. Correct Care Solutions, LLC, 914 F.3d 52 (1st Cir. 2019) (elements of hostile-work-environment claim)
Maldonado-Cátala v. Municipality of Naranjito, 876 F.3d 1 (1st Cir. 2017) (continuing-violation doctrine in harassment cases)
Franchina v. City of Providence, 881 F.3d 32 (1st Cir. 2018) (timely anchoring act need not be independently actionable)
Pérez-Cordero v. Wal-Mart P.R., Inc., 656 F.3d 19 (1st Cir. 2011) (evidence lacking obvious sexual connotations can still show gender animus)
Tang v. Citizens Bank, N.A., 821 F.3d 206 (1st Cir. 2016) (retaliation requires protected conduct, adverse action, and causation)
Harris v. Forklift Sys., Inc., 510 U.S. 17 (1993) (severity or pervasiveness needed to alter employment conditions)