posted on Friday, February 10, 2006 3:15 PM
by
Lou Michels
Hostile Work Environment for Female Prison Guards
The California Supreme Court's reversal of summary judgment in favor of the California Department of Corrections last summer got wide play from most of the mainstream media. The key holding -- that a supervisor's sexual favoritism toward a subordinate can play out in conduct severe or pervasive enough to create a hostile working environment based on gender -- was simplified in a number of stories to say that "a boss who has an affair with a coworker may give the other employees a basis for a lawsuit." Actually, the facts of the case were sufficiently egregious make a good case for an illegal hostile environment under existing law, without the office romance embellishment.
On the remand, the intermediate appellate court promptly reversed itself and found more than sufficient claims to establish a hostile work environment if proved true at trial, Miller v. Dep't of Corr., Cal.Ct.App., No. C040262, unpublished opinion (Jan.19, 2006). The court also found that certain types of conduct that are typically used to establish the hostility of a work environment also fall into the category of adverse employment actions. Things like undermining authority, publicly demeaning an employee, subjecting an employee to "ostracism" and the like, are now adverse actions under California law.
All of a sudden, that mandatory sexual harassment training that California employers must provide begins to assume some urgency. If employers did not have sufficient incentive to police office romances before, they certainly do now, at least on the West Coast.