Juanita Crouch v. SunCakes NC, LLC

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
• Decided: February 23, 2026
• Docket: 25-1579
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

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UNPUBLISHED

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

No. 25-1579

JUANITA CROUCH,

Plaintiff - Appellant,

v.

SUNCAKES NC, LLC,

Defendant - Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, at Charlotte. John A. Gibney, Jr., Senior District Judge for the Eastern District of Virginia, sitting by designation. (3:23-cv-00880-JAG-SCR)

Argued: December 11, 2025 Decided: February 23, 2026

Before NIEMEYER, WYNN, and BENJAMIN, Circuit Judges.

Affirmed by unpublished opinion. Judge Niemeyer wrote the opinion, in which Judge Wynn and Judge Benjamin joined.

Wilson Frank Fong, HENSEL LAW, PLLC, Greensboro, North Carolina, for Appellant. Lori P. Jones, JORDAN PRICE WALL GRAY JONES & CARLTON, LLP, Raleigh, North Carolina, for Appellee.

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NIEMEYER, Circuit Judge:

Juanita Crouch commenced this action against her former employer, SunCakes NC,

LLC (“SunCakes”), alleging sexual harassment, discrimination on the basis of sex, and

retaliation — all in violation of Title VII — and failure to pay wages in compliance with

the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”), as well as retaliation under that act.

The district court granted summary judgment to SunCakes, and we affirm.

I

Crouch was employed by SunCakes as a server at an IHOP restaurant in Charlotte,

North Carolina. She remained so employed for roughly four months, during which she

missed some 26 out of 56 scheduled shifts and was tardy and left early for many that she

did not miss. Indeed, during her last month, January 2022, she was scheduled for eight

shifts and failed to show up for any of them, appearing only once without notice for a 4-

hour shift on January 9, 2022. Because SunCakes had warned Crouch earlier about these

attendance and tardiness issues, it terminated her employment on January 12, 2022.

Crouch claims that while working during that four-month period at the IHOP, her

immediate supervisor, Shawn Edwards, propositioned her for sex while the two were at

work. She testified, “He asked me if he can come back to my place, and we could possibly

f - - k,” and she responded, “no,” explaining, “I don’t involve myself with people at my job

. . . as far as me and you having any consensual thing outside of work, its not going to

happen.” Crouch also stated that Edwards “offer[ed] [her] a ride home on multiple

occasions” and that she repeatedly said, “No, I have a ride, and I don’t want to see you

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personally. I don’t want to sleep with you.” These propositions, as Crouch testified, made

her feel “uncomfortable and awkward.” Crouch also testified to an occasion when

Edwards, in her presence, put another woman on speaker phone to lewdly describe a prior

sexual encounter.

Crouch complained about Edwards’ conduct to the restaurant’s general manager,

Audra Causey, who acknowledged that other female employees had made similar

complaints. Causey told Crouch that she should give Causey a written statement describing

the incidents, and Crouch agreed. Crouch, however, never got around to doing so before

her termination.

During her four-month employment, Crouch also complained to Causey that she

was hired as a server at $2.13 per hour plus tips but that she was required, at times, to do

hostess duties, like filling to-go orders, where she still got paid $2.13 per hour but received

no tips. She noted that her low wage as a server could not be justified when working on

to-go orders because she did not receive tips for that work. She asked that she be paid the

minimum wage of $7.25/hour while working on hostess-related responsibilities. SunCakes

management, however, declined her request.

A little more than a year after Crouch’s employment at SunCakes was terminated,

Crouch filed a complaint in North Carolina state court against SunCakes for unpaid wages

related to her hostess duties and for retaliation by terminating her in response to her wage

complaints. The Superior Court of Mecklenburg conducted a jury trial, during which

Crouch testified as the sole witness. After she testified, the state court granted SunCakes’

motion for a directed verdict and dismissed Crouch’s state causes of action with prejudice.

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The court held that there was no triable wage and hour claim because Crouch had stipulated

that the total pay she received from SunCakes, including base wage and tips, was in excess

of the minimum wage. With regard to her retaliation claim, the court found that Crouch’s

evidence failed to “rais[e] more than a suspicion, conjecture, guess, surmise or

speculation.”

Several months after filing her state wage and hour claim, Crouch commenced this

action, alleging hostile work environment, discrimination on the basis of sex, and

retaliation, and subsequently amended her complaint to include claims for unpaid wages

and retaliation under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act.

On SunCakes’ motion, the district court ultimately granted SunCakes summary

judgment on all of Crouch’s claims. On the hostile work environment or sexual harassment

claim, the court concluded that Crouch failed to provide any corroborative evidence that

Edwards’ offensive comments were severe and pervasive conduct. On her sex

discrimination claim, the court concluded that Crouch had failed to make a prima facie

case, as no reasonable jury could find that her job performance was satisfactory. On her

retaliation claim, the court concluded that Crouch had indeed made out a prima facie case

but that she failed to meet her burden to show that SunCakes’ proffered nondiscriminatory

reason for her termination — her absenteeism and tardiness — was pretextual. Finally, on

the FLSA claims, the court held that Crouch’s claims were barred by the two-year statute

of limitations.

From the district court’s judgment dated May 2, 2025, Crouch filed this appeal.

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II

With respect to Crouch’s allegation of sexual harassment under Title VII, insofar as

it supported her hostile work environment claim, we acknowledge that Edwards’ proposals

to Crouch for after-work sex were totally unacceptable, as was his playing a lewd telephone

call in her presence. While it might be well argued that such conduct was not sufficiently

severe or pervasive to amount to illegal sexual harassment, Crouch reasonably claimed that

it made her feel “uncomfortable and awkward.” To establish credibility as to this

characterization, Crouch testified that she contemporaneously told a friend, several

coworkers, and the general manager about Edwards’ conduct. Yet she failed to provide

any corroborating evidence from those sources. As we have explained, “we generally

consider self-serving opinions without objective corroboration not significantly probative.”

Evans v. Tech. App. & Serv. Co., 80 F.3d 954, 962 (4th Cir. 1996); see also Williams v.

Giant Food Inc., 370 F.3d 423, 433 (4th Cir. 2004) (“merely a self-serving opinion . . .

cannot, absent objective corroboration, defeat summary judgment”). This was not a

situation where corroborative evidence was unavailable due to the circumstances of the

harassment. To be sure, Crouch did testify that she complained to Causey, the restaurant’s

general manager, but she also acknowledged that the manager told Crouch to give her a

statement, which Crouch agreed to do. But, as Crouch acknowledged, she never got around

to doing so. As a consequence, there was no contemporaneous written statement. In these

circumstances, we conclude that the district court did not err in granting SunCakes

summary judgment on this claim.

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With respect to Crouch’s Title VII discrimination claim — whether the

discrimination was effected by sexual harassment or animus or however Crouch alleged it

— Crouch ultimately failed to demonstrate that SunCakes’ non-discriminatory reason for

her termination was a pretext. SunCakes terminated Crouch due to her “blatant and

ongoing violation of company policy related to absenteeism,” and the record supports its

claim. As the district court summarized the record, Crouch consistently missed her

scheduled shifts, often with little or no notice, and when she did make it to work, she

frequently arrived late and left early. The court pointed out that Crouch missed 26 out of

56 total scheduled shifts, and in January, she missed all 8 of her scheduled shifts prior to

her termination. Upon SunCakes’ production of this legitimate, non-discriminatory reason

for its termination of Crouch’s employment, the burden shifted to Crouch to establish that

the reason given by SunCakes was not the true reason but a pretext for unlawful

discrimination. See McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792, 802–05 (1973).

Crouch has not produced such evidence. Thus, as the record stands, there is not one

scintilla of evidence suggesting that the reason SunCakes terminated Crouch’s employment

was because of sex.

And as to Crouch’s Title VII retaliation claim, Crouch alleged that the termination

of her employment was in retaliation for her complaining about Edwards’ sexual advances.

Again, Crouch did complain to Causey, the restaurant manager, but Causey responded that

Crouch should write up a statement, which Crouch agreed to do, but never did. There is

no evidence in the record, however, that that exchange was a reason for SunCakes’

terminating her employment. See Boyer-Liberto v. Fountainebleau Corp., 786 F.3d 264,

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281 (4th Cir. 2015) (noting that the plaintiff has the burden of proving a “causal link”

between a protected activity and an adverse employment action). And again, there is also

no evidence that the reason that SunCakes gave for her termination — absenteeism and

tardiness — was pretextual.

Finally, as to Crouch’s claims under the FLSA, the district court held that Crouch

filed her action more than two years after her action accrued and therefore was barred by

the applicable statute of limitations. See 29 U.S.C. § 255(a). We can find no error in the

court’s ruling. Crouch’s employment was terminated on January 12, 2022, and she filed

her FLSA claim on February 24, 2024.

While the FLSA does extend the statute of limitations to three years if the conduct

alleged was “willful,” id., there is no evidence in this case that any alleged violations were

willful as provided by the statute. See Desmond v. PNGI Charles Town Gaming, L.L.C.,

630 F.3d 351, 358 (4th Cir. 2011) (noting that the employee has the burden of proving

willfulness). Indeed, it appears that there was no violation at all. As the FLSA provides,

a tipped employee’s wages are sufficient if, between her base wage and tips, the employee

received total payment that meets the minimum wage. 29 U.S.C. § 203(m)(2)(A). The

FLSA’s regulations specifically recognize that some tipped employees will work “dual

jobs,” specifying that a waitress “who spends part of her time cleaning and setting tables,

toasting bread, making coffee and occasionally washing dishes or glasses” need not be paid

at a separate rate for those associated, but non-tipped responsibilities. 29 C.F.R.

§ 531.56(e). As the regulation explains, “[s]uch related duties in an occupation that is a

tipped occupation need not by themselves be directed toward producing tips.” Id. Based

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on the record before the district court, SunCakes did, in fact, pay Crouch minimum wage

— consisting of her base pay and tips — during the entirety of her employment, a fact that

Crouch has not controverted.

* * *

For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the judgment of the district court.

AFFIRMED