The Facts

In the Supreme Court case Pennsylvania State Police v. Suders Nancy Suders charged three of her male supervisors of sexual harassment. Nancy worked at the police department where her supervisors subjected her to inappropriate gestures and comments. Nancy’s supervisors claimed she was terminated on the bases she had failed a required computer skilled test numerous times. Nancy found her exams in a drawer in the women’s locker room; this showed that supervisors had not sent her test scores. When Nancy’s supervisors learned that her tests were missing, they accused her of theft, they treated Nancy as if she was a criminal as they questioned her. Nancy tried to report the sexual harassment by contacting the Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) she found them unhelpful. Due to the issues Nancy had with the EEO she never officially reported the sexual harassment but she did resign thereafter. Nancy came back and sued the three supervisors under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act. The judgment was not in her favor although Nancy had enough evidence on her Title VII for hostile work environment the court determined she has ample opportunity to report these charges but she never did. The Supreme Court ruled the same as the District Court showing that when an employee is having issues at work that Ellerth/Faragher (which is when an employee is having sexual harassment issues at work it is always the employers fault) is not effective unless the employee who is having these issues takes the proper steps to notify the right people. Thanks to this court case companies take extra care to make sure that employees understand that they must report any and all harassments to their HR departments to make sure these wrongs can be corrected and so there will not be another Pennsylvania State Police v. Suders.


Cities
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