How Employer Inaction Forces Sexual Harassment Victims To Use Self-Help For Protection Against Their Harasser
Employers, our sexual harassment lawyers in Sumter County, Florida know, almost never accept responsibility for their failure to protect sexual harassment victims. Emboldened by decades of rulings from employer-friendly judges bailing them out for tolerating sexual harassment in the workplace, employers have become increasingly brazen in attacking and blaming sexual harassment victims for hostile working environments created and maintained by employers. One area where employers routinely attack and blame sexual harassment victims, our sexual harassment attorneys in Sumter County, Florida have learned, is how sexual harassment victims protect themselves against their sexual harasser.
Federal employment discrimination law, as the court in Fuller v. City of Oakland, Cal., 47 F.3d 1522 (9th Cir. 1995) explained, “does not permit employers to stand idly by once they learn that sexual harassment has occurred.” Once an employer knows or should know that an employee is being sexually harassed, the employer must take prompt and effective corrective action to stop the harassment and prevent the harassment from continuing. In Swenson v. Potter, 271 F.3d 1184 (9th Cir. 2001), the court observed that when “the employer fails to take corrective action after learning of an employee’s sexually harassing conduct, or takes inadequate action that emboldens the harasser to continue his misconduct, the employer can be deemed to have adopted the offending conduct and its results, quite as if they had been authorized affirmatively as the employer’s policy.”
Sexual Harassment Victims & Self-Help
In far too many cases, employers do nothing to protect sexual harassment victims. Instead of taking prompt and effective corrective action to prevent the harassment from recurring, employers require sexual harassment victims to resort to self-help to protect themselves against their harasser and stop the harassment from continuing. After allowing sexual harassers to continue to prey on their victims, employers will then attack and blame sexual harassment victims regarding their methods of self-help. If the method of self-help utilized by sexual harassment victims is physical in nature, employers invariably will discipline or terminate them. When sexual harassment victims bring retaliatory discharge claims over the termination, employers will maintain that the sexual harassment victims have forfeited their protection from retaliation because the physical nature of their self-help was “unreasonable.”
In this article, our sexual harassment lawyers in Sumter County, Florida explain how the alleged facts in Sfanos v. Cranberry Crossroads Dining Venture, LLC, 2024 WL 4827171 (W.D. Pa. Nov. 19, 2024) are illustrative of how employers attempt to strip retaliation protection from sexual harassment victims who are forced to resort to self-help against their sexual harassers.
Retaliation Lawsuit
In that case, a woman named Sfanos brought a retaliation claim against her former employer, Cranberry Crossroads Dining Venture, LLC (“Cranberry Crossroads”), pursuant to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (“Title VII”). Title VII protects employees from sexual harassment. Title VII also protects employees from retaliation when they oppose or complain about perceived sexual harassment in the workplace. Sfanos claims that she was fired for opposing sexual harassment she endured in the workplace.
In January 2023, Sfanos began working at Cranberry Crossroads as a server. She was fired a month later. During her brief period of employment, Sfanos alleges that she was sexually harassed by one of the restaurant’s cooks, Smith. Sfanos asserts that Smith “made repeated comments to her about her physical appearance and looks.” Sfanos also claims that Smith “repeatedly commented” on her hair and told her things like “you look good’ and “look at those eyes.” Sfanos further claims that Smith made comments about oral sex when customers would order hot dogs. Sfanos maintains that management witnessed these comments but does not allege that any manager or supervisor took any action in response.
Smith’s sexually harassing behavior, according to Sfanos, was not limited to verbal conduct of a sexual nature. Sfanos alleges that Smith once rubbed her back, without her consent, in front of a Manager. Sfanos asserts that she told Smith to stop, which elicited a comment from Smith to the Manager that Smith couldn’t help himself because Sfanos was “so soft.” Sfanos claims that rather than tell Smith to stop, the Manager made an ageist comment and said that Sfanos was “too old to be soft.”
According to Sfanos, Smith’s alleged inappropriate behavior culminated on February 18, 2023. On that day, Sfanos maintains that Smith approached her “from behind, making a sexual humping [gesture] and using a plastic container he was holding to push into [Sfanos’] backside aggressively.” Sfanos responded by threatening to punch Smith if he touched her again. The restaurant’s General Manager witnessed this incident. But rather than intervene on Sfanos’ behalf, the General Manager fired Sfanos about 15 minutes later, telling her the job “isn’t working out” and that Sfanos “seemed stressed.”
Threat To Punch Not Disqualifying
Cranberry Crossroads filed a motion with the trial court seeking dismissal of Sfanos’ retaliatory discharge claim. In moving for dismissal, Cranberry Crossroads argued Sfanos lost her protection from retaliation under Title VII for opposing Smith’s alleged sexually harassing behavior by threatening to punch Smith if he touched her again. Cranberry Crossroads contends that Sfanos’ act of self-help was “unreasonably hostile and disruptive to the workplace.” Thus, Cranberry Crossroads maintains that because Sfanos threatened to punch her alleged sexual harasser if he touched her again, Title VII did not protect her from retaliation and Cranberry Crossroads was lawfully entitled to fire Sfanos for her behavior.
The trial court disagreed and denied Cranberry Crossroads motion for dismissal. The trial court found that Sfanos’ threat to punch Smith qualified for protection from retaliation as “opposition” to perceived sexual harassment. The trial court reasoned that the message Sfanos conveyed is clear—telling “Smith—who was assaulting her—to stop, or she would hit him.” The trial court also found that the “threatening conduct of Sfanos’ message” did not disqualify her from protection from retaliation under Title VII. The trial court pointed out that “the idea of certain oppositional conduct being so unreasonable as not to be protected activity isn’t found in any precedential Third Circuit decision.” “It also doesn’t appear,” the trial court noted, “in any recent decision (i.e., in the last 15 years or so), from any court.” Thus, the trial court concluded that it “has some doubts as to continuing viability” of the case cited by Cranberry Crossroads as standing for the proposition that Title VII’s protection against retaliation is limited to “employee behavior that is reasonable.”
Sumter County Sexual Harassment Lawyers
Based in Ocala, Florida and representing workers throughout Florida, our sexual harassment attorneys in Sumter County, Florida have fought for the rights of sexual harassment victims for more than two decades. If you have been sexually harassed at work or have questions about your rights as a sexual harassment victim, please contact our office for a free consultation with our sexual harassment lawyers in Sumter County, Florida. Our employee rights law firm takes sexual harassment cases on a contingency fee basis. This means that there are no attorney’s fees incurred unless there is a recovery, and our attorney’s fees come solely from the monetary award that you recover.
