People can make a big difference in how much you enjoy your job and how motivated you are to do it. You interact with co-workers, managers, vendors and clients on a daily basis, and when those working relationships really work, it’s a wonderful thing. When they don’t work, however, things can turn sour. A working relationship, like any relationship in life, can range from perfectly friendly and harmonious to belligerent and hostile. When you have harassing work relationships, it can create a poisonous work environment that could damage not only your motivation and performance at work but could seep into your personal life as well. If you’re experiencing this kind of work environment, you no doubt want a way out and you might be wondering, “Do I have a legal claim to stop the harassment I’m suffering at work and remedy that damages it has done?”

Not all difficult working relationships and harassing activity lead to a legal claim. Simply because you don’t get along with a co-worker or manager doesn’t mean you are being “harassed” as that term is used in the law. In this posting, we’ll talk about when harassment at work rises to the level of a legal claim as well as the deadlines you should be aware of if you have such a claim. Eisenberg & Baum has years of experience handling workplace harassment cases. If you’d like to understand more about whether you have a legal cause of action for harassment you’ve been suffering at work, please contact us.

Elements of a Workplace Harassment Claim

In legal terms, workplace harassment is often associated with sexual harassment, a form of gender discrimination. However, workplace harassment can be the basis for a number of different employment discrimination claims, not just gender. The common elements to a legal harassment claim include:

1. an employee suffers unwelcome conduct,
2. the conduct is based on a protected trait, and
3. either the employee has to endure the conduct in order to keep their job or the conduct is so severe and pervasive it creates a hostile work environment.

We’ll explain each of these elements in more detail below. If you’d like to read about specific examples of harassment claims, take a look at our prior posting, “Common Examples of Workplace Harassment.”

What Is Unwelcome Conduct?

To prove a workplace harassment claim, you must be able to show that you were subjected to some form of harassing conduct and that the conduct was not welcomed on your part. Harassing conduct can come in any number of different forms, from verbal conduct like jokes, insults, taunting or slurs, to physical conduct like touching, groping and pushing. Your response in the face of this conduct will help demonstrate whether it was unwelcomed. Did you object at the time of the behavior, walk away or report the incident to a supervisor? Or, did you join in the joking with your own off-color jokes?

Is the Employee Part of a Protected Class?

As a form of discrimination, a harassment claim must also be based on some sort of legally protected classification. Harassing conduct, on its own, isn’t enough to create a legal claim. Only certain traits or characteristics are protected from harassment under the law. Under federal law, those traits include race, color, national origin, gender, pregnancy, age, religion, disability, and genetic information. Many state and local governments have enacted similar anti-discrimination laws, like New York State’s Human Rights Law, which prohibits discrimination on grounds similar to those protected under federal law as well as sexual orientation, marital status, gender identity, arrest and conviction record, military status or service, observance of Sabbath, political activities, unemployment status, and status as a victim of domestic violence.

Quid Pro Quo or Hostile Work Environment

Finally, in order to have a harassment claim under the law, the employee must be able to show either: (1) they were required to endure the harassing conduct as a condition of their employment or (2) the harassing conduct created a hostile work environment. When an employee is required to endure harassing behavior as a condition of their employment, this is known as a “quid pro quo” claim. An example of a quid pro quo claim would be if a supervisor subjected one of their employees to sexual advances and touching and threatened to fire the employee if they objected.

More common than this explicit exchange of harassment for continued employment, though, is the situation where harassing conduct creates a hostile work environment for the employee. A hostile work environment exists when the harassment is so severe or pervasive that it creates an environment a reasonable person would find intimidating, hostile or abusive. Hostile work environments are typically created through a pattern of harassment rather than a single incident. The law will look at the conduct from the point of view of a reasonable person in the employee’s position to determine whether it was severe and pervasive enough to create a hostile environment.

How Long Do You Have to File a Harassment Lawsuit?

If you do believe you’re the victim of harassment at work and want to pursue a legal claim, you should be aware that the law imposes deadlines on when you can file a legal claim. These deadlines are called “statutes of limitations.” As we’ve discussed before in our posting entitled, “Statute of Limitations for Sexual Harassment Claims,” different deadlines apply depending on where you file your claim, whether you file a claim with an administrative agency like the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which has a deadline of 300 calendar days from the date of harassment, or in state court like New York, which generally gives claimants three years from the date of harassment to file a claim. The sooner you can reach out to an attorney to talk about your claim, the better.

Get Legal Help With Your Harassment Claim

If you’d like to discuss a harassment claim with an attorney, please contact Eisenberg & Baum. We can advise you on the merits of your claim under state and federal discrimination laws and help you sort through the various options and deadlines for filing your claim. We’re based in New York City and have attorneys licensed in many states throughout the country; we can also become admitted pro hac vice with local counsel in other states where we are not currently admitted, so we can help you understand your own workplace harassment case no matter where you are. We offer free initial consultations for employment discrimination claims and bill on a contingent fee basis, so you won’t have to pay us unless we win or settle your case.