WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court announced Monday that it will decide whether federal civil rights law protects a man who is subjected to sexual harassment on the job by another man.
The issue of "same-sex harassment" is the latest frontier of workplace anti-discrimination law, and courts are divided over whether the same rules apply when the harasser and the victim are of the same gender.
To complicate matters further, two quite different kinds of cases on the issue have been heard in lower courts recently.
In the first, male or female employees claim to be the subject of sexual advances by supervisors who are gay or lesbian. Most courts have said that those claims, if true, can be the basis for winning damages under the federal anti-discrimination law.
In the second situation, male workers, particularly in blue-collar jobs, complain that they have been grabbed in the crotch or buttocks by male co-workers or called vulgar names. This crude horseplay may be sexual in nature, but typically the harassers are not gay and are not seeking sex.
The latter cases have been more controversial and the claims have been rejected by most federal courts.
Some management lawyers have said that the anti-bias law is being turned into "a good manners in the workplace" rule. "If it is just the boys horsing around, I think it is very hard to argue Title VII [of the Civil Rights Act] was intended to cover that," said Carla R. Walworth, an employment law expert in Stamford, Conn.
But others said harassment of men by other men can create a hostile work environment and should be made illegal.
"This so-called 'mere horseplay' is based on sex. It is done to men, usually not to women, and it's often men who are weaker, smaller and less macho," said Jon W. Davidson, a supervising attorney for the Lambda Legal Defense Fund in Los Angeles.
He noted that California courts have upheld claims of same-sex harassment under state law.
On Monday, the Supreme Court said that it would resolve the matter in federal law, agreeing to do so in a case of extremely crude horseplay that allegedly took place on an offshore oil drilling platform in Louisiana.
Joseph Oncale worked for several months on the platform but said he was forced to quit because of repeated harassment.
Oncale said that he complained to a higher-level supervisor but nothing was done to stop the harassment. After a shower incident, he quit. Later, he filed a suit against the company, Sundowner Offshore Services, for employment discrimination.
