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Supreme Court to hear same-sex harassment case
December 3, 1997
Oncale
Web posted at: 10:35 a.m. EST (1535 GMT)WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments Wednesday in a case alleging that an oil rig worker was harassed by his supervisors, all of whom were men.
The case comes a decade after the Supreme Court ruled that on-the-job sexual harassment is illegal. Now, the court must decide whether the federal law against such conduct applies when both the harasser and the victim are the same sex.
The plaintiff, Joseph "Jody" Oncale, was hired as a roustabout on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico in 1991. Oncale, then 21, earned $7 an hour, working 12-hour-a-day shifts. His attorney, Nick Canady, says the harassment began almost immediately.
"He has filed complaints with the EEOC outlining how coworkers, including supervisory personnel, grabbed him, held him, removed their penises from their trousers and threatened to have sex with him," Canady said.
"He has claimed he was in a shower when these same men got in the shower stall with him, pinned him in the shower and abused him using a bar of soap," Canady added.
According to his lawsuit, Oncale quit when his employer, Sundowner Offshore Services, ignored his two formal complaints. The suit said Oncale feared the harassment would escalate to rape.
Claiming sexual harassment, Oncale filed suit against Sundowner under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which bars discrimination based on sex. The court's 1986 "Meritor" case expanded the ruling to include a "hostile environment" created by sexual harassment.
Sundowner declined comment on the case. The three men named in Oncale's suit, supervisors John Lyons and Danny Pippen and co-worker Brandon Johnson, say no harassment occurred.
Lower courts in Louisiana threw the case out, saying the law does not cover same-sex harassment.
Several civil rights organizations hope the Supreme Court will decide differently. The court will hold its initial, secret vote later this week. Its decision is expected by July.
"We hope that it's an opportunity for them to reaffirm the many different forms that sexual harassment takes," said Julie Goldscheid of the National Organization of Women's Legal Defense Fund.
The fund is one of a dozen civil rights organizations filing in support of Oncale. Others include the ACLU, the Gay and Lesbian Advocates (GLAD), the Lambda Legal Defense Fund -- another gay rights group -- and the National Women's Law Center.
Canady said that Oncale, a married father of two, is not gay. Nonetheless, gay rights groups are concerned about the case. Some lower courts have ruled that sexual orientation is a factor in considering whether same-sex harassment is covered by the law.
Other courts, said Beatrice Dohrn of the Lambda Legal Defense Fund, have suggested that homosexual victims of harassment are not protected because the discrimination is based on sexual orientation, not gender.
"For those courts, the gay issue taints everything and removes protections for us that the law affords all others," she said.
But the Equal Employment Advisory Council, a nationwide association of employers, contends the law is being stretched beyond what Congress intended.
Courts generally presume that sexual conduct involving a male perpetrator and a female victim or vice versa is based on the victim's sex, the group told the justices in a friend-of-the-court brief.
"But where perpetrator and victim are heterosexuals of the same gender, as in this case, no such inference properly can be drawn," the council argued. "A contrary rule effectively would convert Title VII from a focused mandate to end discrimination into an unmanageably broad code of working behavior."
The case is Oncale vs. Sundowner Offshore Service, 96-568.
Correspondent Charles Bierbauer contributed to this report.
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Related sites:
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- Sundowner Companies
- American Civil Liberties Union Press Release - Oncale vs. Sundowner Offshore Services
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