98 Human Resources Management for Public and Nonprofi t Organizations
The Oncale case addressed sexual harassment involving persons of
the same sex. Joseph Oncale worked aboard an oil platform in the Gulf
of Mexico. According to Oncale, his male supervisors and coworkers
sexually abused him, pushing a bar of soap into his anus and threatening
homosexual rape. Although he complained to his employer, the company
did not respond, so he quit.
The U.S. Supreme Court held that “ nothing in Title VII necessarily
bars a claim of discrimination... merely because the plaintiff and the
defendants... are of the same sex. ” Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights
Act prohibits sexual harassment between members of the same sex,
and the legal standards governing same - sex claims are the same as those
applied to claims of sexual harassment by a member of the opposite sex.
The Court ’ s ruling resolved a confl ict among the federal appeals courts,
which had disagreed on whether alleged sexual harassment by a person
of the same gender could be considered discrimination in violation of
Title VII.
In Faragher , the Court held that public employers can be held liable for
harassment under Title VII even if the employee has not explicitly alerted
the employer about the sexual harassment. Employers may defend against
a suit by showing they took reasonable steps to prevent and correct the
harassment and the employee failed to take advantage of the employer ’ s
procedures.
In Burlington Industries v. Ellerth , the Supreme Court held that an employer
may be held liable in situations where a supervisor causes a hostile work
environment, even when the employee suffers no tangible job consequence,
and the employer was unaware of the offensive conduct.
As a result of the Faragher and Burlington Industries rulings, employers will
be held presumptively liable for sexually hostile environments created by
their supervisors. If an employee is sexually harassed by a supervisor and
loses his or her job, is demoted, or is given an undesirable reassignment,
the employer will be held legally responsible for the harassment even if
company offi cials did not know about it or had strong antiharassment
policies. If the employee is sexually harassed by a supervisor but suffers
no tangible job loss, the employer will be held legally responsible for the
harassment unless the employer can prove it used reasonable care to pre-
vent harassment through effective policies and complaint procedures, and
that the employee “ unreasonably failed ” to make use of the complaint
procedures, and that the behavior would have been stopped had the
employee made the harassment known.