Federal civil rights laws protect men as well as women from being sexually harassed in the workplace, says the HR California Extra newsletter published by the California Chamber of Commerce.

The newsletter was reporting on a case in which the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued employer Prospect Airport Services for failing to stop a female worker from continually pursuing a male co-worker. The federal district court had granted a summary judgment for the employer, but the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal in September reversed that ruling saying, “Men as well as women are entitled under Title VII (of the federal Civil Rights Law) to protection from a sexually abusive work environment.”

According to court documents, Prospect Airport Services, Inc. operates at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas helping passengers who needed wheelchairs.

Rudolpho Lamas started working for Prospect in April 2002 after his wife died the previous September, court documents said. In the fall of 2002, married co-worker Sylvia Munoz began a series of sexual overtures to Lamas, all of which he rejected.

Even after Lamas complained to management, Munoz continued pursuing him and even enlisted the help of co-workers to tell him of her desires, the court document said.

“…but management did nothing about it when Munoz did not stop, and management knew she had not. Instead the assistant general manager told Lamas to sing to himself ‘I’m too sexy for my shirt,'” the court noted.

Lamas said the situation made him think the workplace was hostile and his job performance suffered. Prospect fired him in June 2003.

The Court of Appeal said in its ruling:

“Title VII (of the federal Civil Rights Act) is not a general civility code. A violation is not established merely by evidence showing sporadic use of abusive language, gender-related jokes, and occasional teasing. A violation is established when the unwelcome sexual conduct is sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of the victim’s employment and create an abusive working environment.

“We weigh both severity and pervasiveness to evaluate whether a reasonable victim would think that sexual harassment had become a permanent feature of the employment relationship.

“An employer is liable for a employee’s sexual harassment of a coworker if it knew, or should have known, about the harassment and failed to take prompt and effective remedial action. Harassment is to be remedied through actions targeted at the harasser, not at the victim.”

HRCalifornia Extra points out that the lower court, in siding with Prospect, “noted that ‘Lamas admits that most men in his circumstances would have welcomed the behavior he alleged as discriminatory, but that due to his Christian background, he was embarrassed.'”