Sexual Harrassment & Affirmative Action GOVT 2305, Module 5

Sexual harassment The courts have held that employers who sexually harass their employees or permit sexual harassment in the workplace are guilty of illegal employment discrimination. Sexual harassment can be male-female, female-male, male-male, or female- female.

Categories of sexual harassment Quid pro quo harassment Hostile environment A supervisor threatening an employee with retaliation unless the employee submits to sexual advances is quid pro quo harassment. “You either sleep with me or you are fired,” is a clear and blatant example of quid pro quo sexual harassment. An employer may be guilty of sexual harassment if an employee is subjected to sexual conduct and comments that are pervasive and severe enough to affect the employee’s job performance. A supervisor that continues to ask a subordinate for a date despite repeated rejections may be guilty of creating a hostile work environment.

Affirmative Action

Affirmative Action Affirmative action refers to steps taken by colleges, universities, and employers to remedy the effects of past discrimination.

University Admissions Government can apply affirmative action in hiring and college admissions only if it can demonstrate a compelling governmental interest. Promoting racial diversity in higher education has been judged to be a compelling reason.

The Bakke Case In Regents of the University of California at Davis v. Bakke (1978), the Supreme Court ruled that a numerical quota for minority admissions to the university violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Nonetheless, race and ethnicity could be considered as one of several factors in admissions decisions as a “plus factor” in an individualized admissions process.

Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) The Supreme Court reaffirmed the Bakke precedent in a 2003 case involving the University of Michigan Law School. The Court ruled that the university, which is a government agency, could consider race in its admissions program because the government has a compelling interest in promoting racial and ethnic diversity in higher education.

Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin Abigail Fisher from Sugar Land finished outside of the top 10 percent of her high school class and was denied admission to UT. She sued, arguing that the university’s use of race/ethnicity in its admissions process discriminates against whites and Asians.

Affirmative Action RIP? Many observers believed that the Supreme Court would vote 5-4, with Justice Anthony Kennedy the swing vote, to end or at least severely restrict the use of affirmative action in university admissions.

However . . . In 2016, the Court voted 4-3 to uphold the UT admission process.

What You Have Learned What is sexual harassment? What are the two types of sexual harassment? What is affirmative action? What is the significance of the Bakke case? What is the significance of the Grutter case? To what extent are colleges, universities, and employers legally able to use affirmative action to increase enrollment and employment of women and minorities?