But the ruling also established the “severe or pervasive” standard, which required the conduct to be so severe that it affected the conditions of the victim’s employment and created a hostile working environment.
It marked the first time a sexual harassment case made it all the way to the nation’s highest court, and ultimately, the justices ruled that sexual harassment was an illegal form of discrimination. She argued such harassment created a hostile working environment and a form of unlawful discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. at 19 years old and said she then endured three years of sexual harassment and assault at the bank by her supervisor, who she said coerced her into having sex, made demands for sexual favors at work, exposed himself to her in the office and raped her on several occasions. The “severe and pervasive” standard came out of a 1986 United State Supreme Court case brought by Mechelle Vinson, who was hired as a teller-trainee at a bank in Washington, D.C. We were pretty shocked by some of the cases that we read of harassing behavior that happened and there was no opportunity for someone to have their day in court.” Courts have gone ‘off the rails’ “The severe or pervasive level makes it nearly impossible, if not impossible. “Lawyers talked about how they would have potential clients and they would outright tell their clients, ‘Well this isn’t enough, this is not going to even be a case,’” said Peppin, R-Rogers. And many want to, especially if they feel they were harassed and unfairly terminated or didn’t agree with the findings of their human resources department.īut appeals in the courts often end before they even begin, Peppin said. In all workplaces, employees have the opportunity to take a sexual harassment claim to court through the state’s human rights act or the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. That language would nullify in the state a decades-old “severe or pervasive” legal standard used by judges to determine if any sexual harassment case could be actionable - or even heard - in court.
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