New York Employment Lawyer Blog

The New Jersey state Supreme Court has unanimously ruled that schools can be held liable for repeated, prolonged student-on-student sexual harassment. The case involved a New Jersey boy who contended he was victimized by years of homophobic taunts and attacks until he finally withdrew from school.

The court ruled unanimously that New Jersey's Law Against Discrimination was intended to protect students from harassment based on sexual orientation, and that it is up to school districts to take reasonable steps to stop ongoing mistreatment.

Chief Justice James Zazzali analogized students to employees and held that students were entitled to a hostile-free educational environment, much like employees are entitled to a work environment that is free from sexual harassment.

"Students in the classroom are entitled to no less protection from unlawful discrimination and harassment than their adult counterparts in the workplace," Zazzali wrote. "Reasonable measures are required to protect our youth, a duty that schools are more than capable of performing."

The case was sent back to the Office of Administrative Law for a hearing on whether the school district was negligent.

The Attorney General's Office praised the ruling as added protection for students against sexual-orientation harassment and bullying.

"We applaud the court for issuing a decision that recognized the promise of the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination to eradicate the cancer of discrimination," said Attorney General spokesman Lee Moore.

"Children are there most of the time during the day, and a child needs to be safe and not learn in an environment that's filled with harassment," Dennisha said. "In my school, there were some incidents where kids were picked on and harassed, and they brought in a program about no bullying and teasing."

The decision caps a discrimination suit brought by a student against the Toms River Regional School District. The student, identified in court filings as L.W., contended he endured name-calling and other sexual harassment beginning in the fourth grade. The taunts escalated to physical assaults that did not end until the boy withdrew to attend private school as a high school freshman, at the district's expense.

The district employed progressive disciplinary action against some offending students, the filings show, but the reprimands were student-specific and were not accompanied by any organized reinforcement of the district's anti-discrimination policy.

State law requires New Jersey public schools to have an anti-discrimination policy that specifically protects students from harassment because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, according to Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network spokesman Daryl Presgraves.

A Manhattan jury has ordered New York City to pay $1 million to a corrections officer who claims he was sexually harassed by a female captain at Rikers Island.

The New York Daily News reports the jury in Manhattan federal court deliberated less than two hours Wednesday before finding that officer Scott Singleton was forced to work in a hostile environment.

Singleton's lawsuit claimed he was subjected to sexual harassment and blackmail by Capt. Robin Walker.
The 36-year-old Singleton said he rejected an offer in 2004 to spend the weekend with Walker. He told Walker he was living with another Rikers Island officer and they had a child together.

Singleton's attorney Fred Lichtmacher told the Daily News that Walker sent an anonymous letter to Singleton's girlfriend claiming he had been unfaithful.

The 49-year-old captain has rejected the sexual harassment charges.

The city is deciding if it should appeal the verdict.

Two former employees of the University of Texas at Arlington have filed suit in federal district court claiming that they are the victims of religious discrimination after being dismissed by the University. According to the lawsuit, last March, after learning that a male employee was having problems with a female co-worker, the two employees stayed after work to pray for the woman-- who was on vacation. They met at her office cubicle, prayed for her, and-- in the religious tradition of one of them-- dabbed olive oil on the door frame of the cubicle. The University, saying that it has been upheld by the Texas Workforce Commission and the Texas Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, said: "praying, shouting and/or chanting over a co-workers personal and professional belongings without her knowledge and consent constitutes harassment of a fellow co-worker. In addition, rubbing this co-worker's cubicle with oil is blatant disregard for university property, both of which are identified as behavior that is grounds for dismissal."

According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC"), Federal job discrimination complaints filed by workers against private employers rose in 2006 for the first time in four years.

"These figures tell us that discrimination remains a persistent problem in the 21st century workplace," said the commission chairwoman, Naomi Earp.

As in past years, allegations of discrimination based on race, sex or retaliation were the most frequent complaints, according to the commission, which enforces federal anti-discrimination laws among private employers.

Allegations of race discrimination, with 27,238 charges, accounted for 35.9 percent of all filings last year.

Sex discrimination accounted for 23,247 complaints, or 30.7 percent of all filings last year. Charges based on retaliation rose to 22,555, or 29.8 percent of all complaints.

Discrimination complaints based on disability rose to 15,625, or 20.6 percent of all filings. Age discrimination came to 13,569 or 17.9 percent of all complaints filed in 2006. National origin complaints came to 8,327, or 11 percent of the total.

Religious discrimination complaints totaled 2,541, or 3.4 percent of all filings. Equal pay complaints were 663, or 0.9 percent of all filings.

The total exceeds 100 percent because individuals may allege more than one kind of discrimination in a complaint.

All categories saw complaints rise from 2005 with the exception of age and equal pay discrimination complaints.

In addition, there were 12,025 complaints of sexual harassment, with a record 15 percent filed by men. A record 4,901 pregnancy discrimination complaints were filed last year.

Additional data available at http://eeoc.gov/stats/enforcement.html

A federal appeals court ruled this week that Wal-Mart Stores, the world's largest private employer, must face a sex discrimination class-action lawsuit alleging that female employees were discriminated against in both pay and promotions.

The lawsuit claims that over 1.5 million current and former female employees earned less than men and were bypassed for promotions.

Wal-Mart argued that conventional rules of class actions should not apply in this case because its 3,400 stores operated like independent businesses, and that the company did not have a policy of discriminating against women.

This ruling expanded the suit, originally filed by six women, to include all women who worked at Wal-Mart stores from December 1998 to the present, excluding upper management and pharmacy workers.
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