For more than a decade, Luis Patino, a machinist at Birken Manufacturing Co. in Bloomfield, endured jeers from co-workers who pelted him with anti-gay insults in three languages — English, Spanish and Italian. The words made his body shake in humiliation and anger, he told a jury in 2006.

Patino's repeated complaints to the company and the state have led to what many experts are calling a landmark decision on workplace harassment. The state Supreme Court ruled Friday that employers may be liable if they fail to protect employees from harassment based on sexual orientation.

Connecticut law expressly prohibits discrimination based on gender, and Friday's ruling affirmed that workers may also sue employers for anti-gay harassment in the workplace.

"This is the first appellate case anywhere in the country to apply the hostile workplace rubric to sexual orientation. Principally, it's been applied to gender discrimination and racial discrimination," said attorney Jon L. Schoenhorn of Hartford, who argued Patino's case before the Supreme Court.

The decision, written by Supreme Court Chief Justice Chase T. Rogers, also upheld an earlier jury trial, which found in favor of Patino and ordered Birken to pay the now 72-year-old machinist $94,000. Patino's employment at Birken, which makes aircraft components, ended in 2004.

The attorney for Birken did not respond to a request for comment on Monday.

Patino, who had been employed by Birken since 1977, complained to company officials in 1991 that he had become a target of slurs by co-workers. That complaint, according to Schoenhorn, led to a situation in which even "more people began picking on him."

Another complaint to company officials, filed in 1995, was greeted by a response from Birken's then-vice president and general counsel Gary Greenberg, who recommended that Patino undergo an evaluation by a psychologist. Greenberg suggested that Patino's on-the-job distress might pose a "safety risk to others when his mental facilities were compromised," according to court documents.

Greenberg is now president of Birken.

In 1996, Patino filed a complaint with the state Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities, alleging that he was still the subject of slurs. Patino filed another four complaints with the commission over the next eight years.

In response to Patino's 1996 complaint to the CHRO, Greenberg investigated and determined that none of Patino's co-workers knew anything about the alleged harassment, according to court documents.

In 2004, Patino filed his fifth complaint, which alleged that Birken had allowed "a hostile work environment" to develop "because of the plaintiff's sexual orientation [and] failing to take adequate measures to alleviate the harassment or to remedy the hostile work environment."

That complaint led to a jury trial, which began in 2006. The jury awarded Patino $94,000, and the decision was appealed to the state Supreme Court by Birken.

In an interview Monday, Schoenhorn said, "He was one of their best machinists. It's an employer's duty to stop this kind of harassment."

"They wouldn't, for instance, allow Nazi swastikas painted on the machines," Schoenhorn said. "This case makes it a duty of the employer, once harassment is made known, to do something about it. Workers still think making fun of gay people is OK."

Ben Klein, an attorney with Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, said: "Although it's long been accepted that general anti-discrimination laws protect [against] gender and racial harassment, this is the first decision of a state Supreme Court anywhere in the country clearly establishing that harassment in the workplace based on sexual orientation is also covered by general anti-discrimination laws."

Klein said Monday that the decision also clarifies that other types of harassment — such as those targeting physical disabilities, religion or national origin — are also covered by anti-discrimination laws.

The Supreme Court decision is bound to have a significant impact, said attorney Stephen Aronson, a partner with Robinson & Cole in Hartford.

"Connecticut companies and companies doing business in Connecticut will sit up and take notice of this," Aronson said. "This will make them look to see if their workplace practices are in accordance with the court's ruling."

"At the root of all this, you want to create a workforce of people that get along regardless of national origin, sexual orientation, race, creed, color," he added.

"Anti-gay prejudice is still prevalent," said Klein. "This is a powerful message that we must be vigilant in protecting against harassment that is still much too common."

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