Louisiana Attorney Lawyer

Sexual harassment in the workplace may be illegal, even if the offender and victim are the same sex, the Supreme Court on Wednesday in a decision that could affect almost all Americans work.

With the unanimous vote in the revitalization of the LA an action has been followed closely by employers and the nation of gay rights groups, the Court declared same-sex may be harassed anti-discrimination Federal justice.

In this process, a man claimed he was sexually harassed by three other men, while work on a Ölbohrinsel Gulf of Mexico.

Wednesday the decision, provided that new guidelines are important for resolving claims of sexual harassment, but many questions remain about the legality of certain employment practices in some settings.

“Common sense and sensitivity to social context, it is the courts and juries to distinguish between what is legal and illegal, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the court.

“We are very satisfied with the General Court adopted the default,” said Ann Reesman, a lawyer for the Equal Employment Advisory Council, a group of employers. “He adds some clarity.”

Gay rights advocates also welcomed the decision. “The right bourgeois no longer exclude homosexuals falsely of sexual harassment and thus to benefit all American workers,” said Elizabeth Birch of the Human Rights Campaign.

The decision allows homosexual victims of harassment, the Federal Tribunal even if Congress did Bias said based on sexual orientation is illegal.

Kathy Rodgers now Legal Defense and Education Fund, said the government “once and for all places of sexual harassment law directly into the mainstream of non-discrimination law.”

The concept of “harassment” does not appear in the text of the Anti-Bias Law of the name of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But the Supreme Court ruled in 1986 that sexual harassment constitutes discrimination if it “a hostile environment,” the workplace.

In the following decisions, the judge declared a hostile environment can not be opened by sexual behaviour, but also by “discriminatory intimidation, ridicule and insult … Pervasive sufficiently serious or modification of employment conditions of the victim. ”

Scalia, the seven pages, the opinion said: “We see no justification … for a categorical rule, the same-sex harassment claims from the coverage of Title VII.” But he warned of lower courts on the risks of “socializing the workplace normal - as male-on-male horseplay or flirt intersexuality - for discriminatory conditions for employment”.

All the circumstances must be taken into consideration, “said Scalia and gave the example of a football coach slam the fanny by a player, his position on the field. No illegal, Scalia said, but not necessarily the case, if the coach does the same thing, which his secretary, male or female.

He expressed concern about the fact that Title VII “a code of courtesy to the American employment are false.

“The risk is not greater for homosexuals as for the party against sexual harassment and it is reasonable to reflect a careful attention to the requirements of the statutes,” said Scalia.

He added: “Title VII does not prohibit all verbal or physical harassment at work, but is directed only at discrimination because of sex. The critical question is whether a … Members of sex are exposed to have provisions or conditions of service of members of the opposite sex is not suspended “.

In the case of Louisiana, a federal appeals court threw via Joseph Oncale’s appeal and decided that the federal law ever, it is a same-sex harassment.

His allegations of sexual harassment, comes four months of work during the year 1991 as a roustabout in a Gulf of Mexico with Ölbohrinsel Sundowner Offshore Service.

Oncale’s appeal against Sundowner and three men, said he sexually attacked, beaten, threatened with rape and touched by his supervisor, John Lyon, and a second charge, Danny Pippen. Another defendant, staff Brandon Johnson, was accused of supporting one of the alleged incidents.

Oncale, now lives in a small town near Baton Rouge, said he twice reported the situation to its highest representative of the employer on site, but no action is taken. He said that conclusion, because he feared that the harassment would rise to rape. All three men, warned that his behaviour as Locker-room hazing or horseplay.