Articles Posted in Sexual Harassment

New York employment discrimination laws (as well as those around the country) tend to focus on the actions of individual managers, supervisors, or others; or on individual discriminatory policies or practices by employers. This approach is useful and necessary for obtaining justice for individual employees who have endured sexual harassment. It is proving, however, to be insufficient for addressing broader systemic problems that enable and contribute to sexual harassment and employment discrimination in the first place. Liability for damages in a sexual harassment lawsuit might not provide incentive for widespread reforms in companies with vast resources. Earlier this year, the State of New York tried a different approach. Instead of acting in its capacity as an enforcer of employment discrimination laws, it acted in its capacity as a corporate shareholder, alleging that a former CEO accused of sexual misconduct breached his fiduciary duties. New York City’s public pension funds later joined the lawsuit alongside the state funds. DiNapoli et al v. Wynn et al, No. A-18-770013-B, verif. am. complaint (Nev. Dist. Ct., Clark Cty., Mar. 23, 2018).

Under employment statutes like Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the New York City Human Rights Law (NYCHRL), unlawful discrimination on the basis of sex includes sexual harassment in two broad categories. Quid pro quo sexual harassment consists of demands for sexual activity in some form as a condition of obtaining or maintaining employment. Hostile work environment involves unwelcome sexual conduct, ranging from sexual jokes or remarks to outright sexual contact or assault, that is so pervasive that it interferes with an employee’s ability to do their job. These laws allow employees to file complaints, followed by lawsuits, seeking a variety of damages.

Lawsuits for employment discrimination can lead to changes within a company, such as when a public agency like the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission requires new company policies, subject to monitoring and review, as part of a settlement. Unlike this type of lawsuit, which imposes change from the outside, shareholder derivative suits are brought by corporate insiders as a means of enforcing a corporation’s rights or protecting its interests. See N.Y. Bus. Corp. L. § 626. A lawsuit brought under Title VII or the NYCHRL typically casts the employer on the side of the alleged harasser, seeking to hold the company liable for the actions of its agent. A shareholder derivative suit arguably allows a company to distance itself from the alleged acts of individuals. It is no substitute for a lawsuit that allows an aggrieved employee to recover damages directly, but it could be a useful method of demonstrating that corporations will not tolerate sexual harassment among their executives.
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In New York City, sexual harassment is viewed as unlawful sex discrimination under federal, state, and municipal law. The past year has seen numerous instances of workplace sexual harassment finally seeing some measure of attention and, in some cases, justice. For all the progress that we have seen recently, it is worth remembering that nationwide recognition of sexual harassment as a violation of antidiscrimination laws first occurred just over thirty years ago, and that the term “sexual harassment” itself is barely forty years old. A group of women in New York coined the term in 1975, in support of a woman who quit her job because of a male supervisor’s alleged unwelcome sexual advances.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of several factors, including sex. A series of court decisions have expanded the definition of “discrimination on the basis of sex” to include two sexual harassment scenarios. First, “quid pro quo sexual harassment” involves demands for some sort of sexual activity by a supervisor or manager, either as a condition for obtaining employment or as a condition for continued employment or employment benefits. Second, a “hostile work environment” occurs when a worker is subjected to unwanted sexual conduct, ranging from jokes or comments to outright assault, which interferes with their ability to perform their job duties. It took years of advocacy and litigation to get legal recognition of these claims.

Before sexual harassment had a name, women had no clear way to push back against such behavior by bosses and coworkers. The television show Mad Men might have been a “historical drama,” but the history it portrayed is very recent. In 1975, a woman quit her job at Cornell University after enduring years of unwanted advances from her boss, including alleged acts that might be deemed sexual assault today. She filed for unemployment benefits, but was denied after the university asserted that she quit for “personal reasons.” A group of women employed by the university rallied to her defense, founding a group called Working Women United. The group held meetings at which women shared their workplace experiences. The term “sexual harassment” appeared out of these meetings.

Workers in the restaurant industry, particularly servers, depend on tips for their income. Under both state and federal law, employers are not required to pay the full minimum wage amount to employees who customarily receive tips. Instead, they pay a “tip credit” that, when combined with a worker’s tip income, totals at least the minimum wage. This can put restaurant workers in a vulnerable position. A restaurant server may worry about lost income if they object to harassment by a customer. A report published by Mic in late 2017 examined reports of sexual harassment by tipped restaurant employees. It found that restaurant workers have one of the highest rates of reported sexual harassment.

The federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) defines a “tipped employee” as one who “customarily and regularly receives more than $30 a month in tips.” 29 U.S.C. § 203(t). Tipped employees’ compensation is a combination of wages paid by their employer and tips paid by customers. An employer of a tipped employee must pay a minimum wage, or tip credit, of $2.13 per hour, plus any additional amount needed to raise the employee’s total compensation to the minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. Id. at §§ 203(m), 206(a)(1)(C); 29 C.F.R. § 531.59. New York City mandates higher minimum wages than the FLSA. N.Y. Lab. L. § 652(1)(a). For tipped employees in New York City restaurants, the minimum wage as of December 31, 2017 is $8.00 per hour for employers with ten or fewer employees, and $8.65 per hour for those with eleven or more employees. The tip credit is $4.00 and $4.35, respectively.

Laws at the federal, state, and city level in New York City prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of sex. This includes sexual harassment in situations where unwelcome and pervasive sexual conduct creates a hostile work environment. A claim could arise from a single incident, if it is severe enough, but most hostile work environment claims are based on an ongoing pattern of behavior. The conduct that gives rise to a hostile work environment could come from one or more supervisors, coworkers, or customers. If, as is the case in the Mic report mentioned above, customers are responsible for the alleged hostile work environment, the employer must have known about the conduct and failed to act in order to be liable.
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As the nation pays greater attention to sexual harassment in the workplace, hotel maintenance employees are finally gaining a platform to talk about what they have endured. Several recent high-profile lawsuits have sought to address the alleged sexual harassment of housekeeping workers by hotel managers and other employees. Many housekeepers face another problem, however—sexual harassment by hotel guests. Employers may be held liable for acts perpetrated by customers, but New York City sexual harassment plaintiffs must prove that the employer knew or should have known about the harassment and failed to act. This can be particularly difficult in the context of hotel maintenance, in which employees may find themselves alone with a guest in the guest’s room. Measures like panic buttons may help address the issue, but the sheer scope of the problem suggests that much work is left to be done.Sexual harassment is considered a form of sex discrimination under statutes like the New York City Human Rights Law and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. One of the main forms of sexual harassment covered by these laws occurs when unwelcome sexual conduct creates a hostile work environment that interferes with an employee’s ability to do their job. In order to assert a claim for a hostile work environment created by one or more customers, a plaintiff must be able to “show that the employer either knew (actual notice) or should have known (constructive notice) of the harassment and failed to take immediate and appropriate corrective action.” Watson v. Blue Circle, Inc., 324 F. 3d 1252, 1259 (11th Cir. 2003).

The hospitality industry presents additional challenges for plaintiffs. In a practical sense, identifying guests who sexually harass hotel employees can be difficult because of “plausible deniability”—it is usually the employee’s word against the guest’s. This makes investigations difficult and puts a hotel in a position of choosing between an employee and a paying customer. In a legal sense, hotels and other lodging-related businesses have a particularly high duty of care toward their customers. “A hotel…has a duty to use due care to protect its guests against foreseeable hazards, including criminal acts.” Shadday v. Omni Hotels Mgt. Corp., 477 F. 3d 511, 512 (7th Cir. 2007).

Part of the basis for a hotel’s duty of care to its guests is based on the general fact “that the hotel has much better access to information about the danger than its guests do.” Id. at 512-13. A hotel also has a duty to protect its employees against criminal acts and other hazards, but absent a robust method for reporting and recording complaints by hotel employees against guests, it can be difficult for hotels to anticipate or respond to problems with individual guests.