What You Need to Know About Suing an Employer for Creating a Hostile Work Environment
Employers have a legal responsibility to prevent hostile or toxic workplaces. Here’s how to sue an employer for creating a hostile work environment.
The workplace is hostile when the behavior is unwelcome, pervasive, discriminatory, and continuous and causes an employee to feel unsafe. Hostile work environments may appear in different ways, verbal or written, physical or visual harassment. An employee who is subject to a hostile work environment has the right to sue their employer for violating state and federal workplace laws.
What is a Hostile Work Environment?
Hostile work environments are illegal harassment and behavior affecting employees’ ability to perform their jobs. An employee may have a hostile work environment if offensive behavior, harassment, or hostile conduct makes it difficult to work. Hostile work environments may appear in many different ways.
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Labor laws consider a work environment hostile if it continually violates employment laws. A workplace violates employment laws when there is harassment specifically targeted against a group protected under federal, state, or local laws based on gender, race, age, religion, or natural origin. A hostile work environment legally occurs when unwelcome, offensive behavior or actions towards a protected class disrupt an employee’s job performance or career progress.
Federal law defines a hostile work environment as when an employee feels unsafe or uncomfortable while at work due to continued harassment or discrimination. The behavior must be severe or pervasive enough to qualify the environment as hostile.
State and local laws generally provide additional protections on top of federal law. For example, New Jersey considers a workplace hostile when an employee fears going to work because of the offensive, intimidating, or oppressive atmosphere created by harassment.
Examples of a Hostile Work Environment
Laws regarding and defining hostile work environments consider many different behaviors and atmospheres illegal. Hostile work environments include unwelcome, pervasive, discriminatory, and continuous behavior.
There are three forms of workplace harassment, including:
- Verbal/written,
- Physical, and
- Visual.
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Hostile work environments may include:
- Repeated sexual comments to an employee,
- Offensive images or comments shared in the office,
- Sexual advances, unwelcome touching, or inappropriate comments about one’s appearance,
- Blocking someone from leaving their workspace,
- Use of racial slurs,
- Comments regarding one’s religious beliefs, and
- Any threatening or demeaning behavior.
Hostile work environments do not include petty slights, annoyances, or, unless extremely serious, isolated incidents. Labor law deems one’s conduct unlawful once the environment becomes hostile and a condition of continued employment.
How to Sue for a Hostile Work Environment
Employees have the legal right to work in a professional environment free from harassment. Any employee may sue their employer for creating and allowing a hostile workplace to proliferate.
The employer is liable for the harassment, conduct, and behavior done by all employees or non-employees they supervise. An employer is also liable for a hostile work environment if they knew or should have known about the harassment but failed to take prompt, appropriate, and corrective action. The employer may get sued even if they are not being hostile or inappropriate towards the employee.
The employer can avoid liability in a hostile work environment if it is proven:
- The employer reasonably tried to prevent and correct the inappropriate behavior, and
- The harassing employee unreasonably failed to take advantage of the preventive or corrective opportunities provided by the employer.
To sue, the employee must:
1. Keep a record of the hostile behavior.
The employee should record every instance of inappropriate behavior or conduct, including a description of the incident, time, location, and names of everyone involved.
2. Speak privately with the person
An employee must prove they did everything in their power to resolve the issue before pursuing it with government agencies. The employer may need to speak to the offender to ask them to stop or request help from a supervisor.
3. Check the employer’s policy handbook.
Companies should have an employee handbook that states the company policy for different situations. The handbook states how the company wants an employee to report harassment, discrimination, or a hostile work environment, such as reporting to HR and making a formal complaint. The employer may then take steps to resolve the issue.
4. File a complaint in a federal or state agency.
An employer may not initiate corrective action to resolve the hostile work environment. In this case, an employee must file a complaint within a federal or state agency that manages Equal Employment Opportunity. The employer may file the complaint with the help of an employment lawyer;
5. File a lawsuit.
The federal or state agency may investigate the complaint and issue a Right to Sue Letter. After receiving the letter, the employee may file a lawsuit against the employer in the courts. An employer may want to settle the situation outside of the courtroom.
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