An Administrator's Guide to California Private School Law

Chapter 7 - Recognizing And Preventing Harassment, Discrimination And Retaliation

widespread sexual favoritism creates a hostile work environment even for the other employees who are not subject to the sexual conduct. As explained by the Court, sexual favoritism communicates the demeaning message that female employees are viewed as sexual playthings or that the only way for women to get ahead in the workplace is to have sex with the boss. If management could reasonably believe that an employee is complaining about sexual harassment, the employee is protected from retaliation and the employer has a duty to investigate. EEOC v. Prospect Airport Services, Inc. 928 Rudolpho Lamas was subjected to daily sexual overtures and advances by his co-worker, Sylvia Munoz. Munoz repeatedly gave Lamas love notes and photographs of herself and made sexual remarks to him. Munoz also recruited a group of co-workers to tell Lamas that she loved him. Munoz and the co- workers continued this behavior on a daily basis for roughly six months, which had a detrimental effect on Lamas’ work performance. Lamas was eventually terminated. The Court ruled that Lamas could proceed to trial on his sexual harassment claim, finding that while Munoz’s conduct was not severe, it may have been sufficiently pervasive to create a hostile work environment.

Schools may be liable for harassment committed against their employees by clients, customers, vendors, and other third parties if the school knew or should have known of the harassment and failed to take immediate and appropriate corrective action to stop the harassment. 929 Therefore, it is up to the school and its management, including supervisors, to ensure that nobody in the work environment engages in harassing conduct, even clients or other non-employees. 930 B. Q UID P RO Q UO “Quid pro quo” is the other type of harassment. “Quid pro quo” is Latin for “this for that.” In the context of sexual harassment, quid pro quo harassment occurs when submission to sexual conduct is explicitly or implicitly made a condition of a job, a job benefit, or the absence of a job detriment. 931 Therefore, the accused harasser must be in a position to affect the accuser’s employment (i.e., a supervisor). This form of harassment can include sexual propositions, unwarranted graphic discussion of sexual acts, or commentary on the employee’s body. 932 Implicit conditioning of job benefits on submission to sexual conduct is more common but harder to detect than explicit quid pro quo harassment. The factors to evaluate in determining whether quid pro quo harassment has occurred are:  Whether the sexual conduct was unwelcome;

 Whether a reasonable person in the accuser’s position, who is the same gender as the accuser and has the same fundamental characteristics as the accuser, would have believed he or she was the subject of quid pro quo harassment;  Whether the accused harasser intended to subject the accuser to quid pro quo harassment; and

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