Final guidance published last week by the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission aims to clarify for employers, employees and others their obligations related to harassment in the workplace.
“Harassment, both in-person and online, remains a serious issue in America’s workplaces. The EEOC’s updated guidance on harassment is a comprehensive resource that brings together best practices for preventing and remedying harassment and clarifies recent developments in the law,” EEOC Chair Charlotte A. Burrows stated in a press release.
“The guidance incorporates public input from stakeholders across the country, is aligned with our strategic enforcement plan and will help ensure that individuals understand their workplace rights and responsibilities,” she added.
This is the first update to the guidance in 25 years, aimed at enforcing more recent changes in federal law. EEOC clarified that harassment by any person — including employers, coworkers, customers and clients — can violate federal law.
“While the guidance is not law and not binding on a court, it is intended to serve as a resource for employers, employees and others, and provides insight into how the EEOC views various topics related to workplace harassment,” wrote attorney Emily E. Tichenor, an associate at the Polsinelli law firm.
According to the EEOC, the new guidance “updates, consolidates and replaces the agency’s five guidance documents issued between 1987 and 1999 and serves as a single, unified agency resource on EEOC-enforced workplace harassment law.”
Among other guidance, the EEOC calls out asking intrusive questions about a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity, gender transition or intimate body parts as forms of harassment. The guidance covers employers that refuse to use transgender workers’ preferred pronouns and bars them from using bathrooms that match their gender identity, with the commission asserting that those activities amount to unlawful workplace harassment under federal anti-discrimination law.
Tichenor noted that the guidance also covers topics such as “establishing causation, hostile work environment, liability for harassment claims and remote work.”
“As we commemorate this year’s 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the guidance will help raise awareness about the serious problem of harassment in employment and the law’s protections for those who experience it,” Burrows said.
Employees are encouraged to report potential harassment early, EEOC said, because early reporting provides employers more opportunity to stop the harassing conduct before it becomes so severe or frequent that it violates a federal EEO law.
