Newark Sexual Harassment

Experienced Employment Attorneys Assisting Workers, Employees and Resident of Newark, New Jersey

Workplace sexual harassment may cause great emotional distress to victims. In many cases, the perpetrator is a person with some authority over the victim in the workplace, such as a supervisor, a manager, or even a customer. An employer is supposed to protect its employees from sexual harassment by instituting strong anti-harassment policies and training its supervisors and managers and staff on appropriate conduct in the workplace. These policies should also apply to work-sponsored events, such as holiday parties or after-hours office functions. At Phillips & Associates, our Newark sexual harassment lawyers represent employees who have suffered from mistreatment at work.

Pursuing a Sexual Harassment Claim

Sexual harassment may include any conduct based on the gender or sex of the victim that is sexually harassing, offensive, and/or unwelcome. For example, it may involve touching, groping, offensive remarks, jokes, innuendoes, inappropriate gifts, and requests for dates or sexual favors. How severe or how frequent the harassment is will determine whether it is actionable. If it creates a hostile work environment, or if your employment is conditioned on submitting to, or refusing, the harassment, it may be possible to recover damages.

Title VII and the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (NJLAD) prohibit employers from allowing sexually harassment, which can be based on your gender, sex, gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation

Title VII only applies to employers that have 15 or more employees, and there are damages caps. The New Jersey Law Against Discrimination prohibits all employers, irrespective of their size, from discriminating against employees on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, marital status, and domestic partnership or civil union status. For example, a New Jersey employer may not stand by while an employee is being sexually propositioned or made fun of, or where coworkers insult an employee because he or she is transgender. Similarly, a New Jersey employer may not look the other way if a top-performing supervisor has been accused of touching an employee inappropriately at a Holiday party.

Don’t Be a Victim of Sexual Harassment in the Workplace

Despite the laws in place to protect employees from sexual harassment, sexual harassment still does occur, and in some cases, employers may not respond appropriately. Our sexual harassment attorneys can help employees evaluate whether they may have a claim.

In addition to the right to file a complaint with management of HR, you may also file a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) or file a lawsuit in state court. To file a lawsuit in state court, you need not first file a charge in the EEOC. However, it is wise to consult with an attorney about why it might be beneficial in your case to file in Federal Court or State Court.

Under federal law, an employer is always liable for a supervisor's harassment if it culminates in a concrete employment action, such as a termination, a demotion, or a failure to provide benefits. However, if it does not, employers may be able to avoid liability by showing that they used reasonable care to prevent and correct the harassing conduct, and the victim unreasonably did not take advantage of preventive opportunities to avoid harm. Similarly, in New Jersey, an employer may be held vicariously liable for a supervisor's sexual harassment if the employer knew, or should have known, about the sexual harassment and failed to remedy it.

Contact a Sexual Harassment Lawyer in the Newark Area

As of 2010, Newark's population was over 200,000 residents. More than 100,000 other people work there but live elsewhere. If you believe that you have been harassed on the job, the Newark sexual harassment attorneys at Phillips & Associates may be able to provide legal representation in a lawsuit for damages. Contact us at (866) 229-9441 or use our online form to set up a free consultation. Our employment lawyers help people in communities, such as Passaic, Bergen, Morris, Essex, Union, Hudson, Somerset, Middlesex, Monmouth, Mercer, Burlington and Camden Counties.