Learning Your Rights about Harassment in the Workplace

Are you feeling harassed in your workplace and wondering if you have a legal claim? You are not alone. Many people face harassment at work, and are unsure of their legal rights.

It is important for you to know about harassment laws in California, and what type of behavior is considered illegal and actionable sexual harassment by California Courts. There are laws to protect you from suffering from sexual harassment and gender-based harassment in the workplace, but not all forms of harassment at work are sufficient to support a lawsuit.

This article provides information regarding the different types of behavior that have been considered unlawful harassment in the workplace by California Courts. If you feel that you have suffered from unlawful sexual harassment in the workplace, you should consult a sexual harassment attorney for help and advice on what steps to take next to combat the harassment at work.

Under California law, there are many different forms of discriminatory harassment in the workplace. For example, sexual harassment can be based on a serious incident such as physical violence or threat of physical violence. Physical violence includes an unwanted serious physical touching of a private sexual part of another.

Sexual harassment in the workplace can also take the form of a pervasive pattern of unwelcome advances, sexual innuendos, or offensive gender-related language that occurs with sufficient frequency to alter the conditions of the offended employee's employment and create an abusive environment.

With respect to the pervasiveness of the harassment, courts have held an employee generally cannot recover for harassment that is occasional, isolated, sporadic, or trivial, but rather the employee must show a concerted pattern of harassment of a repeated, routine, or generalized nature. For example, the repeated use of foul sex-based terms that are inherently degrading and demeaning in nature can qualify as the basis for pervasive sexual harassment in the workplace.

Similarly, sexual epithets, offensive, explicit references to women's bodies and sexual conduct can also qualify as pervasive sexual harassment in the workplace. Pornographic pictures in the workplace can qualify as pervasive sexual harassment in the workplace in the nature of creating a hostile work environment.

In some cases, even threatening stares qualify as acts of sexual harassment in the context of retaliation for complaints about sexual harassment from the perpetrator who makes such threatening stares.

Another example of sexual harassment in the workplace in the nature of pervasive harassment is repeated unwanted requests for sex.

A slightly different category of harassment in the workplace is referred to as quid pro quo sexual harassment. This type of sexual harassment involves an unwanted request for sexual favors in exchange for an employment benefit or for avoiding adverse employment action.

The behavior of a supervisor who yells more vociferously or more frequently at members of one sex than the other is considered a form of pervasive sexual harassment, although such behavior may be considered more akin to gender discrimination because it does not need to have any sexual content or sexual behavior in order to be actionable. For example, the non-sexual behavior of a male manager who yells in an abusive manner more often to female employees than to male employees is considered workplace harassment.

Please do not hesitate to give us a call at 650-857-1600 or email us at brodericklaw@brodericklaw.com for a free consultation on how best to approach your sexual harassment problems with employers. At the Broderick Law Firm we are here to help you stop wrongful sexual harassment in the workplace.

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