White men still SOL.

Via Free Beacon:

Federal labor law has long tolerated rough words in picket lines, but a federal judge once considered a prospective Obama Supreme Court appointee is asking regulators to crack down on “racial and misogynistic epithets.”

A three-judge panel at the Washington, D.C., Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld a National Labor Relations Board ruling that a telecommunications company violated the rights of several striking workers whom it suspended during a 2012 strike, while reversing the board regarding the appeal of a fired worker, who intentionally drove slowly and boxed in her non-striking co-workers.

Judge Patricia Ann Millett, writing for the court, found that Consolidated Communications was wrong to suspend two workers, one of whom “gave [a co-worker] the middle finger and uttered its associated obscenity,” because they “were not the type of seriously coercive or intimidating behavior that forfeits a worker’s protection.” It also cleared another male worker who was punished for grabbing his crotch as a female co-worker walked past and later striking her side view mirror because the there was no evidence that he touched her car.

Judge Millett, who was appointed to the appeals court after Sen. Harry Reid (D., Nev.) pushed through the nuclear option in 2013 and was considered a potential replacement for Justice Antonin Scalia, took the rare step to also pen a concurrence along with her opinion.

In it, she called on the NLRB and other labor regulators to eliminate any insults directed at workers or managers that are insulting to women and minorities. She pointed to past cases in which a male worker called a female co-worker a “whore” for supporting management as an example of the conduct the board must no longer tolerate.