Sexual Harassment

Both California and Federal law prohibit sexual harassment.  The California 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. 

The California Fair Employment and Housing Commission regulations define sexual harassment as unwanted sexual advances, or visual, verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature. This definition includes many forms of offensive behavior and includes gender-based harassment of a person of the same sex as the harasser.

The following is a partial list of conduct deemed by the California Fair Employment and Housing Commission to be violations of the California Fair Employment and Housing Act:

Unwanted sexual advances
Offering employment benefits in exchange for sexual favors
Making or threatening reprisals after a negative response to sexual advances
Visual conduct: leering, making sexual gestures, displaying of suggestive objects or pictures, cartoon or posters
Verbal conduct: making or using derogatory comments, epithets, slurs, and jokes
Verbal sexual advances or propositions
Verbal abuse of a sexual nature, graphic verbal commentaries about an individual's body, sexually degrading words used to describe an individual, suggestive or obscene letters, notes or invitations
Physical conduct: touching, assault, impeding or blocking movements

The three most common types of sexual harassment complaints filed with the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing are:

An employee is fired or denied a job or an employment benefit because he/she refused to grant sexual favors or because he/she complained about harassment. Retaliation for complaining about harassment is illegal, even if it cannot be demonstrated that the harassment actually occurred.

An employee quits because he/she can no longer tolerate an offensive work environment, referred to as a "constructive discharge" harassment case. If it is proven that a reasonable person, under like conditions, would resign to escape the harassment, the employer may be held responsible for the resignation as if the employee had been discharged.

An employee is exposed to an offensive work environment. Exposure to various kinds of behavior or to unwanted sexual advances alone may constitute harassment. Federal law (Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964) also prohibits sexual harassment. Title VII applies to employers with 15 or more employees, including state and local governments. It also applies to employment agencies and to labor organizations, as well as to the federal government.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC") regulations define sexual harassment to include unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature 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.

The EEOC recognizes that sexual harassment can occur in a variety of circumstances, including but not limited to the following:

The victim as well as the harasser may be a woman or a man. The victim does not have to be of the opposite sex.
The harasser can be the victim's supervisor, an agent of the employer, a supervisor in another area, a co-worker, or a non-employee.
The victim does not have to be the person harassed but could be anyone affected by the offensive conduct. 
Unlawful sexual harassment may occur without economic injury to or discharge of the victim.
The harasser's conduct must be unwelcome.
 

You can learn more about sexual harassment by visiting the following websites and/or reading the following documents by clicking on them:

California Department of Fair Employment and Housing

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

EEOC Policy Guidance on Current Issues of Sexual Harassment

EEOC Enforcement Guidance: Vicarious Employer Liability for Unlawful Harassment by Supervisors

EEOC Policy Guidance on Employer Liability under Title VII for Sexual Favoritism

EEOC Questions & Answers for Small Employers on Employer Liability for Harassment by Supervisors

Even more information about sexual harassment can be obtained from our book -- Litigating Employment Discrimination Cases (James Publishing, 2005 - 2008).

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