LEGAL NEWS
California Law Extends Workplace Discrimination Prohibition to Stalking Victims and Imposes New Reasonable Accommodation Requirement
California Governor Jerry Brown recently signed into law Senate Bill No. 400 (SB 400), which expands the state's current employment discrimination protections to victims of stalking. Effective January 1, 2014, SB 400 amends California Labor Code sections 230 and 230.1 to extend the prohibitions against discharging, discriminating against, or
retaliating against employees who are known or suspected victims of domestic violence or sexual assault, to employees who are victims of stalking. SB 400 also adds a provision to Labor Code section 230 that requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations to victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking.
SB 400 extends the established anti-discrimination protections for taking time off from work to participate in activities related to abuse to employees who are stalking victims. The new law defines the term "stalking" as:4 "Any person who willfully, maliciously, and repeatedly follows or willfully and maliciously harasses another person and who makes a credible threat with the intent to place that person in reasonable fear for his or her safety, or the safety of his or her immediate family";5 or Any person "engaged in a pattern of conduct the intent of which was to follow, alarm, or harass the plaintiff."6
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Iowa Agrees to Pay $1.9M to Settle Workplace Violence/Medical Negligence Claims
A former employee of Polk County District Court will be paid $125,000 as part of a settlement alleging wrongful termination stemming from retaliation following a violence in the workplace complaint. Read more
Workplace Bullies Increase Major Liability Concern For Employers
Imagine, one of your employees commits suicide after suffering several months of psychological workplace bullying by one of your other employees. Imagine you then later learn that the family hired an attorney after they discovered overwhelming evidence that their deceased loved one documented the bullying and your lack of action to correct it.
Or, imagine a horrific workplace violence incident occurs at your company where a disgruntled, bullied employee enacts his vengeance against the workplace bully and others in his department, only for it to be found that your human resources department failed to address the bullying after being given multiple opportunities.
Can you be held liable as an employer? In these two scenarios if you are not found liable by the courts, you still will have to spend a lot of money in attorney fees and you better hope you have the proper insurance coverage in place to offset those expenses and/or awards.
One recent 2010 survey of Americans showed that 13.7 million people said they were currently being bullied, and nearly three times that number said they had been bullied in the past.
Workplace bullying will soon become the next major battleground in employment law, as a growing number of states are now considering legislation that would let workers sue for harassment that causes physical or emotional harm.
This issue will replace sexual harassment as the new Employment Practices Liability claim that employers will have to deal.
Read more about how to address bullying
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