It’s essential for everyone to feel safe and respected in their workplace. The California Fair Employment and Housing Act has set a definition for sexual harassment that includes unwanted sexual advances or any visual, verbal, or physical conduct of a sexual nature. This definition covers a wide range of offensive behaviors, including gender-based harassment of someone of the same sex as the harasser. Some things count as violations:

• Making sexual gestures or displaying suggestive objects or pictures
• Using derogatory comments or slurs
• Making verbal sexual advances or propositions
• Even physical conduct, like touching or blocking someone’s movements

Recognizing and reporting these behaviors is crucial to creating a safe and fair work environment.

Employers in California are obligated to take specific actions to prevent and address incidents of sexual harassment in the workplace. These actions include taking reasonable measures to prevent sexual harassment and, if it does occur, to take appropriate steps to stop it and correct any adverse effects it may have caused.

Employers must also create and implement a sexual harassment prevention policy that outlines procedures for employees to make complaints and for the employer to investigate those complaints. The policy should inform complainants of their rights and obligations and ensure that investigations are conducted thoroughly, objectively, and completely. Anyone with relevant information should be interviewed, and the investigation results must be communicated to the complainant, the alleged harasser, and any other parties directly involved.

If the allegations of sexual harassment are substantiated, the employer must take immediate and appropriate corrective action to ensure that it does not continue. The employer must also inform the complainant that action has been taken to stop the harassment and to address any damages caused.

Sexual harassment complaints are prevalent in California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing and typically fall into three categories:

1. An employee is either denied a job or fired, or they do not receive a work benefit because they refused to provide sexual favors or complained about harassment. Retaliation for reporting harassment is illegal, even if the harassment cannot be demonstrated.
2. In a constructive discharge harassment case, an employee resigns because they can no longer bear an offensive work environment. If it can be proven that an average person, under similar conditions, would quit their job to escape the harassment, the employer may be held responsible.
3. An employee may be exposed to an offensive work environment, such as unwanted sexual advances or other inappropriate behavior, which alone may constitute harassment.

An employee subjected to sexual harassment that is deemed unlawful may receive economic damages, emotional distress damages, punitive damages, attorney fees, and costs. An employee can win a sexual harassment lawsuit even if no job opportunity has been denied and there is no actual loss of pay or benefits. However, under California law, an employer can minimize the employee’s damages by pleading and proving an affirmative defense called the avoidable consequences doctrine. This defense has three elements that the employer must prove: 1) the employer took reasonable steps to prevent and correct workplace harassment, 2) the employee unreasonably failed to use the preventive and corrective measures provided by the employer, and 3) reasonable use of the employer’s procedures would have prevented at least some of the employee’s harm. The avoidable consequences defense will not prevent the employer from being liable for the harassment. However, the defense may allow the employer to escape liability for those damages, and only those damages, that the employee could have prevented with reasonable effort, without undue risk, expense, or humiliation.

If you believe that you, a family member, or a friend may have been the victim of any type of harassment, call the Sexual Harassment Attorneys Beverly Hills Helmer Friedman LLP at 310-396-7714 today. Don’t wait – you may have a valid claim and be entitled to compensation, but a lawsuit must be filed before the applicable statute of limitations expires.