Blog About: Supervisors Without Authority to Affect Employment Status of Other Workers Are not Managers for Purpose of Title VII.

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The basis of an employer’s liability for a claim of hostile work environment under Title VII depends upon whether the harasser is the complainant’s supervisor or merely a co-worker. When a hostile work environment is created by a co-worker, the employer is liable only if the employer failed to provide an avenue for reporting the harassment, or if the employer knew or should have known of the harassment but failed to take prompt and appropriate remedial action. Under Title VII, an employer “knew or should have known” about workplace harassment if “management level employees had actual or constructive knowledge about the existence of a sexually hostile environment.” Therefore, once a manageme...

On June 8, 2009, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit handed down a decision that may narrow employers liability in hostile work environment claims involving co-worker harassment. In Huston v. Procter amp Gamble Paper Products Corp., the Third Circuit held that an employee with mere supervisory authority does not qualify as a quotmanagement-levelquot employee and therefore the supervisory employees knowledge of alleged co-worker harassment is not imputed to the employer.

A federal appeals court in St. Louis has determined that evidence of other sexual harassment instances and complaints brought to an employer’s attention can be considered to show the severity and pervasiveness of a hostile work environment and of the employer having constructive notice of this workplace problem. Sandoval v. American Bldg. Maintenance Indus., No. 08-2271 (8th Cir. Aug. 26, 2009). The Court also clarified the circumstances in which a parent company and its wholly-owned subsidiary will be considered an “integrated enterprise” so that the parent will be considered an employer liable to the subsidiary’s employees for the subsidiary’s conduct. The Eighth Circuit has jurisdiction over Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebra...

When an individual claims to have been racially harassed by co-workers, he or she must show that the employer was negligent either in discovering or remedying the harassment. An employer can avoid liability for co-worker harassment if it takes prompt and appropriate remedial action that is likely to prevent the harassment from recurring. Recently, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals analyzed specific actions taken by a company after a noose was found hanging in a workplace, and found those actions to have been sufficient to uphold summary judgment in the company’s favor.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit recently ruled in Duch v. Jakubek, 2009 WL 4421267 (2d Cir. 2009), that a jury reasonably could find that a supervisor who ignored facts regarding suspected workplace sexual harassment had constructive knowledge of the harassment and, thereby, exposed his employer to liability under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

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