On April 29, 2024, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued its long-promised Enforcement Guidance on Harassment in the Workplace. The document updates and replaces existing EEOC resources on workplace harassment and unsurprisingly (under this pro-worker administration) takes a very broad approach to the topic. Of particular interest to employers, the EEOC also provides specific direction on what it would consider to be best practices for employers in preventing and addressing workplace harassment, including as to policies, training and investigations.Continue Reading The EEOC’s New Harassment Guidance: What Employers Need to Know

In my spare time (which has been limited during the pandemic, given the whirlwind of COVID-19-related legal developments), I like to peruse the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s quarterly Digest of Equal Employment Opportunity Law. (Nerd alert!) In addition to summaries of recent EEOC decisions and federal court opinions, each digest contains an article that provides some insight into the EEOC’s position on a particular topic. Now while the articles are targeted towards federal agencies, they offer private employers a roadmap as to the EEOC’s thinking. We’ve blogged about prior articles on religious discrimination, remedies for discrimination, comparing harassment prevention to crime prevention, and new types of race discrimination, among other things. A recent article caught my eye – “Claims of Harassment and the Problem of Fragmentation.” (Well, that’s a new phrase to me!)
Continue Reading What Is Fragmentation of Harassment Claims? The EEOC Speaks

I was perusing the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s recently released Volume 2 of its 2018 Federal Digest of Equal Employment Opportunity Law (yes, I know I need some better hobbies), and noticed an article entitled, “Assessing Workplace Harassment Prevention Methods Through Comparisons With Similar Crime Prevention Strategies.” The article posits that “[b]y comparing harassment prevention strategies to similar crime prevention efforts, for which empirical research already exists, the EEOC hopes to identify useful tools for preventing workplace harassment.” Well, that struck me as an interesting, if somewhat questionable, approach. But let’s look at what the EEOC says.
Continue Reading The EEOC Compares Harassment Prevention to Crime Prevention

US-EEOC-Seal.svgIn January 2017, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission released proposed guidance regarding workplace harassment.  Because guidance does not carry the same weight as regulations do, which require a formal notice and comment period, there is no legal requirement to solicit public comment on guidance.  However, the practice of voluntarily doing so began under former Chair Jenny Yang and provides employers a valuable opportunity to make their concerns known before the Commission finalizes guidance.

To that end, Shawe Rosenthal, in conjunction with four other law firms, led the effort on behalf of the Employment Law Alliance* to submit written comments  to the Commission’s proposed harassment guidance.  The comment period has closed, and we expect revised guidance to issue—hopefully factoring in some of our comments below!—in a few months.
Continue Reading Reflections on the EEOC’s Proposed Harassment Guidance