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Law and Gender

Brooklyn Law School

2020

Sexual harassment; sex discrimination; Title VII; hostile work environment; Faragher/Ellerth; Faragher; Ellerth; Minarksy; complaint procedure; employer liability; vicarious liability; #MeToo; workplace sexual harassment

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Full-Text Articles in Law

When Women’S Silence Is Reasonable: Reforming The Faragher/Ellerth Defense In The #Metoo Era, Elizabeth C. Potter Apr 2020

When Women’S Silence Is Reasonable: Reforming The Faragher/Ellerth Defense In The #Metoo Era, Elizabeth C. Potter

Brooklyn Law Review

The incredible force of the #MeToo movement has created momentum for long-overdue reform of workplace sexual harassment laws. One problematic element of the sexual harassment scheme is the Faragher/Ellerth defense, a defense to a claim of hostile work environment under Title VII. The Faragher/Ellerth defense allows an employer to escape liability for actionable sexual harassment if it can show that it had a policy against harassment with a procedure for making complaints, but the victim of harassment did not complain using that procedure. But the vast majority of victims of sexual harassment never make a formal complaint to their employer …