labor lawAdivision of labor law center

Employer liability does not stop there. According to the revised Oregon labor Lawson sexual harassment, if a supervisor harasses a subordinate but doesn’t even use their authority role over the person to affect that person’s job, the employer can still be liable for that sexual harassment.

How is that possible? Well, there are certain scenarios. Let’s say that the employer knew that the supervisor was harassing their subordinate and did not act to stop it or did not punish the supervisor for his or her actions. In that case, the employer could be found liable for the harassment.

Another care could be if the employer didn’t know about the harassment by the supervisor—but should have known. If a court can find that the employer should have detected the harassment, or had some sort of system in place to isolate and discover and then punish the supervisor, then that employer could still be liable for the case.

How can an employer protect themselves in such situations? It sounds like perhaps an employer can be darned if they do and darned if they don’t. But the truth is that the employer must always show that they always exercised some sort of effort to prevent sexual harassment at their work sites, and that when they discovered any cases of it, that they promptly did their best to put a stop to it.

The employer could also prove their lack of liability by showing that they had a sexual harassment prevention and or treatment program in place, in order to help out employees who felt that they were being improperly singled out because of their gender or even picked on or groped because of it. But that the employee crying out that they were sexually harassed in court did not take advantage of these systems and safeguards when they had a chance to.

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