1. An employer that has notice that an employee’s verbal harassment of another employee has escalated into a threat of violence and does nothing in response may be liable for hostile environment sexual harassment even if the harassment has occurred over a few days.
2. Evidence of a generally abusive working environment is irrelevant to a claim of sexual harassment, even when there are isolated instances of sexually inappropriate comments.
3. All workplace vulgarity is actionable under the FEHA as sexual harassment.
4. One of the elements courts consider in evaluating whether an employee has a viable claim of hostile environment harassment is the number of days the offensive conduct occurred.
5. One of the justifications given by state and federal courts for enforcing anti-fraternization policies is that they enable employers to avoid potential conflicts of interest.
6. There is no legal risk to an employer for firing the subordinate rather than supervisor when the employer learns that the two are having an intimate relationship in violation of the company’s antifraternization policy.
7. Generally, uttering a single epithet, without other hostile gestures or threats, will not constitute actionable racial harassment.
8. Under a law recently passed by the California Legislature, an employer is strictly liable for the sexual harassment of employees by nonemployees such as clients or customers.
9. The FEHA, as recently amended by the California Legislature, makes an employer potentially liable for sexual harassment by nonemployees but says nothing about harassment by third parties based on other classifications.
10. A California court of appeal recently held that an employer violated a supervisor’s constitutional right of privacy when, pursuant to the employer’s antifraternization policy, it terminated the supervisor for having an intimate relationship with a subordinate.
11. Under no circumstances will staring at someone because of gender constitute actionable sexual harassment.
12. Before the California Legislature acted, the California Supreme Court held that the FEHA did not impose personal liability on a nonsupervisory employee.
13. A California appellate court has held that the amendment making nonsupervisory employees liable for acts of sexual harassment reflected existing law.
14. Federal and state antidiscrimination laws exempt employers with fewer than five employees from liability for sexual harassment.
15. Under both California and federal law, employers are strictly liable for sexual harassment committed by supervisors—regardless of the employer’s actual or constructive knowledge of the harassment.
16. Federal antidiscrimination law does not prohibit same-sex sexual harassment.
17. In 2003 California courts clarified certain aspects of the law of harassment in employment, even as the California Legislature left this area of the law unchanged.
18. One form of hostile environment sexual harassment is inappropriate verbal or physical conduct directed at a person because of his or her gender.
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