Sexual harassment in the workplace in US labor law has been considered a form of discrimination on the basis of sex in the United States since the mid-1970s.
[9] In 1980, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued regulations defining sexual harassment and stating it was a form of sex discrimination prohibited by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
[6] In 1976, Williams v. Saxbe was the first case in a U.S. District Court to establish that quid pro quo sexual harassment constitutes sex discrimination under the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
[14][12] In response to the findings of this case, several earlier decisions against sex discrimination in lower courts were reversed on appeal, including Barnes v Train.
During this case, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals ruled it was sex discrimination for a woman to suffer tangible employment losses (for example losing her job) for refusing to submit to requests for sexual favors.
[19] This case filed by Mechelle Vinson ruled that the sexual conduct between the subordinate and supervisor could not be deemed voluntary due to the hierarchical relationship between the two positions in the workplace.
In the same year, the courts concluded in Faragher v. City of Boca Raton, Florida, and Burlington v. Ellerth, that employers are liable for harassment by their employees.
In the 2006 case of Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Railway Co. v. White, the standard for retaliation against a sexual harassment complainant was revised to include any adverse employment decision or treatment that would be likely to dissuade a "reasonable worker" from making or supporting a charge of discrimination.
2009), applying New York's faithless servant doctrine, the court held that a company's employee who had engaged in financial misdeeds and sexual harassment must "forfeit all of his salary and bonuses for the period of disloyalty.
Robinson Worldwide, Inc. ruled that a hostile work environment can be created in a workplace where sexually explicit language and pornography are present.
[29] In the 2002 EEOC v. Waffle House Inc. United States Supreme Court ruling, it was held that arbitration agreements could not prevent the U.S.
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) from pursuing victim-specific relief in litigation on behalf of an employee who files a timely charge of discrimination.
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and related state agencies received 12,510 new charges of sexual harassment on the job.
California requires organizations with more than 5 employees to provide a written sexual harassment policy as well as an interactive training (either in-person or online) by January 1, 2021.