California Court Takes Strong Stance on Harassment and Retaliation Claims

A California court recently granted summary judgment on behalf of an employee who was called a racial epithet one time by a coworker-and given no clear assistance from the employer’s HR department.

Employee handbooks have harassment reporting procedures and open-door policies (and why they always should).  Handbooks must inform supervisors of their responsibility to ensure that their team is harassment-free, and that any potentially offensive behavior must be reported to their managers and Human Resources immediately.  Employers must also conduct thorough investigations whenever an allegation of harassment arises, no matter how minor the employer believes the harassment is.

What are the Facts?

In this case the employee feared retaliation for making a complaint and only told her coworkers.  The employee asked about her complaint several months later, but her personnel officer informed her that a complaint had not been filed.  The employee asked to file a complaint and was told she should not have told her coworkers about what had happened.  The employer eventually decided that the comment was not severe or pervasive enough to constitute a hostile work environment.

The personnel officer began to bully the employee, and Human Resources did nothing, as they concluded that the bullying could not be proven or disproven.

The California Supreme Court determined that the employee could take her claims to trial, even though one isolated epithet is usually not considered severe or pervasive.  Here, the personnel officer and the harasser were friends, which linked the bullying to the epithet.  The Court also held that the employee also took away the employee’s protection from discrimination and harassment by undermining her ability to report the harassment.

The Takeaways

Make sure your employee handbooks give employee multiple open doors and multiple ways to make complaints as well as instructing supervisors to be proactive.  Leaving one employee with arbitrary power over employee grievances does not result in good faith efforts to keep the workplace discrimination and harassment-free.  And establish a method for discrimination, retaliation, and harassment investigation and use it, no matter how small the incident appears.  Going before a jury will cost this employer at least tens of thousands of dollars.

Update Your Employee Handbook at myHRcounsel

At myHRcounsel, we believe the employee handbook is the most critical legal document for employers, which is why we include them in our services.  With an attorney-drafted state specific employee handbook, your business will have the necessary policies and procedures to avoid a trip to court.