The recent Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals case of Boumehdi v. Plastag Holdings, LLC demonstrates that employers must stop and/or prevent anti-female comments in the same manner as an employer would stop and/or prevent sexual comments in order to avoid liability for sexual harassment. Failure to do so may result in severe penalties for the employer, including back pay, front pay, attorneys’ fees, costs, other compensatory damages, punitive damages, liquidated damages, and interest.
Julie Boumehdi ("Julie") worked in various capacities at Plastag Holdings, LLC ("Plastag"), which manufactured credit cards, gift cards, calendars and identification tags for textile companies. While Julie was employed by Plastag, she was subjected to various sexist comments from her supervisor, including: "Women do not belong in the pressroom and think they know everything"; "women should work in flower shops"; and "Julie should clean the pressroom because it is women’s work." On other occasions, the supervisor told Julie to remain bending over because it was perfect, that Julie should wear low cut blouses and shorter shorts and that the supervisor had to leave work to get a lap dance down the street. Additionally, when Julie became pregnant, her supervisor asked her whether she had obtained a breast enlargement and, after she miscarried, asked what business she had getting pregnant at her age.
After the comments began, Julie reported her supervisor’s harassing conduct to Plastag’s management. Plastag assured Julie that they would talk to her supervisor and "take care of the problem." After her initial complaint, Julie regularly updated Plastag’s management on the supervisor’s continuing comments. Each time she updated Plastag, she was assured Plastag was addressing her complaints.
When the supervisor discovered Julie had complained to Plastag’s management, he warned Julie that if "[she] didn’t watch it, [she’d] be scrubbing the floors and doing the toilets." Julie also began receiving paychecks that failed to compensate her for all of the hours she worked. Later, the supervisor changed Julie’s schedule so that she worked fewer hours. Finally, during her annual review, the supervisor gave Julie the worst rating of her career, which resulted in no annual raise in salary. When Plastag failed to address the supervisor’s conduct, Julie resigned and pursued a claim of sexual harassment against Plastag.
The trial court dismissed Julie’s complaint, finding that the supervisor’s comments were not sufficiently severe or pervasive to be objectively offensive because they were not "unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors or other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature." The Appellate Court disagreed, holding that, while the alleged comments were anti-female rather than sexual, hostile work environment claims are not limited to situations in which the harassment was based solely on sexual comments. Thus, the Appellate Court ruled that Julie could proceed with her claims.
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