Work is hard enough without having to face an unlawfully hostile work environment. If you work at a college or university and believe that your workplace has such severe or pervasive insults and offenses involving your race, color, religion, sex, disability, or other protected characteristic, let the Lento Law Firm's skilled and experienced attorneys help you gain school and other relief. You deserve a workplace free from unlawful harassment. You may also deserve compensation. Call 888.535.3686 now or use our contact form to tell us about your case.
What Is Not a Hostile Work Environment
Every worker knows how challenging work can be. Just because work is hard does not mean that it is unlawfully hostile. Federal and state anti-discrimination laws don't make all harassing and hostile workplaces unlawful. You may have significant disagreements with your co-workers, supervisors, or customers in your college or university employment. You may find it hard to go to work. You may face petty slights and annoyances. You may face a periodic incident that upsets or offends you. Yet legal relief under federal and state anti-discrimination laws generally requires more if your claim is to rise to the level of a hostile work environment. Let our attorneys help you evaluate whether you have a legal right and claim. Keep in mind that even if you do not have a legal claim, your school employer may be willing to provide appropriate relief from undue conditions interfering with your school employment.
What Is a Hostile Work Environment
Federal and state anti-discrimination laws tie legal relief to certain requirements. Three federal laws, including Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, provide the primary framework for defining a hostile work environment. Under U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) enforcement guidelines, a hostile work environment involves (1) unwelcome conduct based on at least one of the protected characteristics that is (2) so severe or pervasive that reasonable persons would consider the work environment intimidating, hostile, or abusive.
Employers and courts will thus focus on evidence that the hostility involved at least one protected characteristic and that the hostility was sufficiently severe, prolonged, or continuous as to create an intimidating, abusive, or hostile environment. Every hostile work environment case is different. Determining whether a certain case qualifies for protection can depend on a thorough examination of all the evidence. It can also depend on researching the applicable statutes, regulations, and case law. Don't rely on your own judgment or the evaluation of an inexperienced and unqualified local criminal defense attorney or civil litigator. Retain our attorneys' skilled and experienced help for a reliable evaluation and effective representation.
Characteristics Protected Against Hostile Work Environments
To have a legal claim for relief from a hostile work environment, you must prove that the hostility had to do with one or more of your protected characteristics. Under the three federal laws cited above, Title VII, the ADEA law, and the ADA, those protected characteristics include race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age of forty years or older, disability, and genetics, including family medical history. State law and other federal law may protect other characteristics including marital status, family status (with or without children), military or veteran status, and even height, weight, and other physical characteristics.
The hostility you face in your school employment may only indirectly refer to one of these protected characteristics. Employers, regulators, and courts may sometimes recognize a hostile work environment claim that depends on showing that the wrongdoers used proxies for a protected characteristic. For instance, reference to unprotected cultural practices may infer unlawful hostility to protected color or race. Reference to unprotected body type, facial features, or hair may likewise infer unlawful hostility to protected age, sex, or race. Let our attorneys help you evaluate whether your work situation involves hostility toward one or more of your protected characteristics to qualify for a hostile work environment claim.
Examples of Hostile Work Environments
Hostile work environments can arise out of a range of different forms of misconduct. It is not always words, and it is not always actions. The above Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) enforcement guidelines give these non-exhaustive examples: “offensive jokes, slurs, epithets or name-calling, physical assaults or threats, intimidation, ridicule or mockery, insults or put-downs, offensive objects or pictures, and interference with work performance.” Keep in mind once again that the ridicule or other action must relate in some way to a protected characteristic. A single racial or sexual slur in combination with non-racial or non-sexual ridicule, though, may indicate that all the conduct is racially or sexually hostile. Examples of hostile words and actions may include:
- sexual innuendo, sexual advances, jokes and comments about sex, and sexual touching or attempted sexual contact, or display or offer of pornographic or other sexually offensive images and materials;
- racial slurs, racial parodies, disparaging comments about race, and disparaging remarks about skin color or body or facial features associated with race;
- wisecracks, jokes, and disparaging remarks about old age, incompetence related to aging, and senility, and display of offensive drawings, photographs, or videos of the elderly and aged;
- disparaging and stereotypical comments about religion, faith, spirituality, and dress or practices related to religion such as prayer, fasting, devotions, and observance of religious holidays, including the display of swastikas or similar images;
- jokes, slurs, and stereotypes about nationality, national heritage, cultural heritage associated with nationality, and immigrant status;
- interfering with work accommodations of one's disability, such as removal of ramps, wheelchairs, or other assistive devices, accompanied by disparaging remarks about disabilities; and
- interfering with or disparaging medical leaves, medical breaks for treatment, or other care for one's medical condition related to family history and genetics.
Related Quid Pro Quo Harassment Claims
Technically, unlawful harassment in the workplace may come in a second form, related to and often mixed with a hostile work environment. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) enforcement guidelines label that related form as quid pro quo harassment. Quid pro quo harassment generally means that a supervisor or other employer representative conditions the complaining employee's employment or favorable employment terms on the employee's submission to a sexual advance or retaliates for refusing an advance. You may have both a hostile environment and a quid pro quo discrimination claim. Let our attorneys help you evaluate and advocate your rights under all available theories for relief.
Whose Misconduct May Create a Hostile Work Environment
You can see from the above discussion that supervisors may play an important role in creating or contributing to and maintaining or exacerbating a hostile work environment. If your school supervisor is the one most engaged in the hostile slurs, innuendo, horseplay, advances, or other actions or is encouraging or ratifying that misconduct, you may most clearly have a legal claim for relief.
But work supervisors are not the only ones who can create a hostile work environment. Co-workers with whom you spend more time at work than you spend with supervisors can do just as much or more to create a severe or pervasive, intimidating, and abusive environment. And if your school employer encourages, ratifies, or permits unlawfully hostile words and actions by students, customers, or others whom your school employer serves, you may also have a legal claim for relief. Even a customer can create a hostile work environment if your school employer does not appropriately address the customer's action. Let us help you evaluate whether your school employer is responsible for the hostile and offensive actions of others.
How Hostile Work Environments Affect Employment
Don't underestimate the potential impact on you of your hostile school work environment. You may have labored under your workplace's hostile conditions for some time while enduring and pressing on. However, undue workplace stress can cause or aggravate mental and physical health conditions. High blood pressure, anger, depression, withdrawal, isolation, weight gain or loss, hair loss, and other symptoms from a hostile work environment could interfere not only with your work but also with your family relationships, long-term health, and other important aspects of your life. You may also lose time at work while undergoing medical treatment or counseling and incurring medical expenses. Your employer may blame your declining work attendance, productivity, engagement, or performance on you rather than recognizing that it is due to a hostile work environment. Watch for how your hostile work environment is affecting you. Listen to your family members, physicians, and counselors. And let us help you gain appropriate relief, including compensation for your losses.
School Procedures to Address Hostile Work Environments
Your college or university employer should not only have policies prohibiting hostile work environments but also procedures that you may invoke to complain of a hostile work environment and gain relief from it. The University of Kansas provides an example, listing several procedures to invoke for its different campuses to address hostile work environments and related discrimination claims. Those procedures are internal administrative procedures. When you follow your school's procedures, you are asking school officials to provide you with appropriate relief. That relief may include termination of the employment of the wrongdoing supervisor or co-workers, their reassignment to other employment away from your employment, their training, or your reassignment to preferred employment. It may also include apologies and compensation reimbursing you for lost work, incurred medical expenses, and mental and emotional distress.
School procedures are not your only avenue. Our attorneys can help you pursue an administrative claim with the EEOC or its designated state civil rights office or pursue court action. However, gaining relief outside of your school may require that you first exhaust your school's internal administrative procedures. Our attorneys can help you do both, seeking relief within your school and enforcing your rights outside your school if the relief your school offers is inadequate.
Special Alternative Relief from Hostile Work Environments
Do not give up and give in if you have already exhausted your school's internal procedures. Instead, contact our attorneys, who may seek special alternative relief through your school's oversight channels. Colleges and universities maintain general counsel offices and retain outside counsel to ensure that they are appropriately managing their regulatory, reputational, and liability risks. If your school's administrators ignored or denied your hostile work environment claim, our attorneys have the reputation and relationships to reach the school's general counsel or outside counsel with a presentation of the school's risks. We may be able to win you the relief you need and deserve, even if you have been unable to gain relief through ordinary administrative channels.
Civil Litigation over Hostile Work Environments
If you are unable to obtain relief from a hostile work environment through your school, our attorneys may be able to represent you in a local civil court or federal court in a hostile work environment and claim for money damages. Civil litigation of this type can be complex, going beyond the skills that local criminal defense attorneys or civil litigators may have. Successful civil litigation may require preliminary administrative filings within your school, with the EEOC, or with a state civil rights department. Don't retain unqualified local counsel. Instead, trust that our attorneys have the skills and experience to investigate, evaluate, and pursue your civil court claim.
Premier Representation Available Nationwide
The Lento Law Firm's skilled and experienced attorneys are available across the country to help you gain relief from your college or university's hostile work environment. You have a lot at stake, including your employment, career, health, and reputation. Your action may also help others who suffer under the same workplace conditions. We have successfully helped hundreds of members of college and university communities across the country. Let us help you. Call 888.535.3686 now or use our contact form to tell us about your case.
