According to the movie The Usual Suspects, “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” The employment discrimination claims to pursue are the ones that involve protected characteristics that are visible to everyone, such as the skin color of the employee targeted by discrimination and adverse actions of which there is only one possible interpretation, such as termination of employment.
How many more employment discrimination complaints fizzle in the human resources office because HR dismisses them as a case of “he said, she said”? If only a complaint fizzling in the office were the worst-case scenario. Sometimes the employer retaliates, and the employee fears complaining again, lest the employer dismiss it as “he said, she said” again, making it look like the employee is the one who is blowing things out of proportion and causing trouble.
Employment discrimination claims related to sexual harassment can be as stressful as the original harassment itself, but by carefully documenting everything and keeping the law in mind, you can prevail in your claim. The sexual harassment lawyers at HKM Employment Attorneys in Hunstville can help you if you have experienced sexual harassment by coworkers or supervisors in your workplace.
What is Sexual Harassment in the Workplace?
The phrase “sexual harassment” appears frequently in news reports and in the content created by Internet famous social media personalities, mostly because it includes the word “sexual.” People whose content betrays an underlying grievance against one sex or the other carry on at length about news reports about sexual harassment, which they did not read carefully, and these news reports are the compositions of poorly paid content mill participants, or worse, chatbots, who in turn did not carefully read the published court decisions or legal complaints on which the news reports are based.
Meanwhile, millions of lonely audience members click, either because they have a deeply-held grievance against one sex or the other or because their lives are so empty that they want one. In all of this noise, no one thinks about the legal definition of sexual harassment.
In the context of employment law, sexual harassment is any antagonistic or bullying behavior by a coworker or supervisor based on the targeted employee’s sex or related characteristics such as family status, sexual orientation, or gender presentation, which is the perceived masculinity, femininity, or androgyny of the employee’s physical appearance, speech, and behavior.
The following are just a few of the many ways in which sexual harassment can manifest itself in the workplace:
- Frequent comments, whether positive or negative, about the employee’s physical appearance
- Questions or comments about the employee’s romantic relationship or lack thereof
- Making sexual innuendos in the employee’s presence, even if they are not directed toward the employee and do not directly reference him or her
- Asking the employee on a date or persistently asking to socialize with him or her outside of work, despite the employee’s refusal or noncommittal answers
- Unwanted touching
- Threatening to take adverse actions against the employee unless he or she engages in physical intimacy with the aggressor
Sexual harassment does not have to come from someone who might plausibly see you as a romantic partner. For example, if you are a heterosexual woman, do not assume that the treatment you are experiencing is just because the person doing it is not a heterosexual man, and therefore, someone with whom a dating site might try to match you.
It is also sexual harassment if a lesbian coworker constantly tells you the reasons that straight men are not interested in you, or, conversely, if she flirts with you. It is also sexual harassment if a gay male coworker tells you that women like you are the reason he is glad he is gay or if a straight woman makes you the target of her “mean girl” behavior by passive-aggressively trying to make you insecure.
How Do Employment Discrimination and Retaliation Laws Apply to Sexual Harassment?
When it occurs in the workplace, sexual harassment is a type of hostile work environment, and a hostile work environment is one of the adverse actions listed in laws related to employment discrimination and employer retaliation. In other words, sexual harassment in the workplace is employment discrimination; specifically ,it is discrimination based on the protected characteristic of sex. Likewise, it is employer retaliation, which is illegal, if your employer takes adverse action against you for complaining about the sexual harassment that you or another employee has experienced or for refusing the sexual advances of someone in your workplace.
How to Pursue a Complaint Arising From Workplace Sexual Harassment
The place to start when filing an employment discrimination complaint, whether it relates to sexual harassment or any other form of employment discrimination, is to contact the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). You cannot file an employment discrimination lawsuit in court unless and until the EEOC authorizes you to do so.
The deadline for contacting the EEOC so that they will consider your complaint is 45 days after the most recent discriminatory action. In the case of sexual harassment, that action might be when your work supervisor attempted to kiss you, or it might be when HR refused to do anything in response to your internal complaint. After you tell your story to the EEOC, it will conduct an investigation into your workplace. If it finds that your claims have merit and are substantiated by evidence, in other words, that your case has a chance in court, it will authorize you to proceed with the lawsuit. Just because your case gets to the lawsuit phase, that does not necessarily mean that it will go to trial. Most lawsuits, including those related to employment discrimination, result in a settlement instead of a trial.
Contact HKM Your About Sexual Harassment Case
The Huntsville employment lawyers at HKM Employment Attorneys, LLP, can give you advice about employment discrimination claims related to sexual harassment. Contact our Hunstville employment lawyers to set up a consultation.
