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Supreme Court Renders Landmark Sexual Harassment Ruling

In a 7-2 ruling, the Supreme Court established new guidelines for employer liability in sexual harassment cases.

The court ruled that employers are always potentially liable for a supervisor's misconduct towards an employee.  The court needed to decide, under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, whether an employee who refuses the unwelcome and threatening advances of a superior yet suffers no adverse, tangible job consequences can recover against the employer without showing the employer is negligent or otherwise at fault for the supervisor's actions. A tangible employment action is described as a significant change in employment status such as discharge, demotion or undesirable reassignment.

The Court adopted the following in Ellerth v. Burlington Industries and Faragher v. Boca Raton 1) "An employer is subject to vicarious liability to a victim-ized employee for an actionable hostile environment created by a supervisor with immediate (or successively higher) authority over the employee."

2) "When no tangible employment action is taken, a defending employer may raise an affirmative defense to liability or damages, subject to proof by a preponderance of the evidence.  The defense comprises two necessary elements:

(a) that the employer exercised reasonable care to prevent and correct promptly any sexually harassing behavior.

(b) that the plaintiff employee unreasonably failed to take advantage of any preventive or corrective opportunities provided by the employer or to avoid harm otherwise."

The Court has also ruled that the differences between "hostile environment" and "quid pro quo" (this for that) used in Title VII cases are terms of "limited utility". Sexual harassment law will no longer rely heavily on the difference between the two terms. The Court states that a supervisor's threat - if it proves to be an empty one - can be a "hostile environment" form of harassment and the employer, even though they may not know the harassment is taking place, is potentially liable.

These rulings are of exceeding importance to former and current employees of Intel who are victims of sexual harassment, and have filed or are thinking of filing claims against Intel.

While the Paula Barrans and the Linda Shostaks may have repeatedly barraged plaintiffs in the past on how many times the plaintiffs "formally complained" or to "describe adverse job consequences", none of the above questions negates the fact that a plaintiff worked in a hostile environment, according to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court rulings are of particular interest in the Venkataraman v. Intel case which is currently in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. FACE Intel hopes that the Venkataraman v. Intel case wins the appeal, aided further in its cause by the recent Supreme Court rulings. The Venkataraman v. Intel especially deserves its day in court for the pervasiveness and severity of sexual harassment that the plaintiffs endured.