SEXUAL HARASSMENT

Have you been sexually harassed in your workplace? Did you know that you can be entitled to recover substantial money damages because of the wrongful sexual conduct of a manager, supervisor or other person in your organization? Sexual harassment may occur when an employer subjects an employee in to unwelcome verbal or physical sexual behavior, or other abusive behavior directed disproportionately against women typically, that is either severe or pervasive.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended in 1972, 1978 and 1991, affords employees the right to work in an environment free from discriminatory intimidation, ridicule, and insult. This law establishes a clear and explicit federal policy against sexual harassment in the workplace. Section 703(a)(1) of Title VII, 42 U.S.C. §2000e-2(a)(1), makes it an unlawful employment practice for an employer "to discriminate against any individual with respect to his . . . terms, conditions, or privileges of employment because of such individual's . . . sex." Title VII places upon an employer the responsibility to maintain a work environment free of sexual harassment. Our courts have held that an employer has the duty, after given notice, to take remedial action to stop sexual harassment which creates an offensive work environment or face liability for failing to do so.

Sexual harassment in employment violates the provisions of the Fair Employment and Housing Act, specifically Government Code sections 12940(a), (j), and (k). The Fair Employment and Housing Act defines harassment because of sex as including sexual harassment, gender harassment and harassment based on pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions.

Sexual harassment under California and Federal law is generally defined as unwanted sexual contact of two main types: (a) quid pro quo harassment which occurs when employment is conditioned on the submission to unwelcome sexual advances, or (b) unwelcome sexual conduct that was severe or pervasive enough to create an abusive environment for the employee.

Under California law, illegal sexual harassment or gender harassment may include, but is not limited to, the following:

• Unwanted sexual advances;
• Employment benefits in exchange for sexual favors;
• Reprisals after a negative response to sexual advances;
• Physical conduct : visually leering, making sexual gestures, displaying of sexually suggestive objects or pictures, cartoons or posters;
• Verbal conduct : derogatory comments, epithets, slurs, jokes;
• sexual advances or propositions;
• Verbal abuse of a sexual nature, graphic verbal commentaries about an individual’s body, sexually degrading words, suggestive or obscene letters, notes or invitations;
• Harassment based on gender, such as targeting a person for offensive or hostile treatment because she is a woman;
• Physical conduct : touching, assault, impeding or blocking movements.

Unwelcome sexual advances and other acts constitute sexual harassment when this conduct explicitly or implicitly affects an individual's employment, unreasonably interferes with an individual's work performance, or creates an intimidating, hostile, or offensive work environment.

Please call us if you feel you have been subject to sexual harassment in the workplace.