© AFP Justin Trudeau au siège de l'ONU à New York, le 6 avril 2017.

A news writer with PBS who was fired for expressing admiration of Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, complains of a double standard because his female coworkers were heard saying Justin Trudeau was “hot” without similar consequences.

The unexpected Canadian content appears in a civil lawsuit filed in New York by Hugh Heckman, alleging wrongful termination because of his gender.

Heckman, 72, was working on a story about Prince Harry and his then fiancée, actress Meghan Markle, on Nov. 25, 2017, according to his statement of claim.

He was looking at a photograph of Markle with another male employee when he said “not bad.”

Two women in the office spoke out against the comment, his claim states.

One woman, sitting some six metres away and unable to see the photo in question, his claim says, said his comment contravened company training on sexual harassment in the workplace; another said “Haven’t you learned?”

Heckman denied his comment had a sexual connotation.

It was, he claims, “intended to convey that the Duchess (of Sussex, as Markle is now known) possessed charm and beauty and was a suitable match for her fiancé, who has a reputation of possessing charm and handsome looks.”

“No reasonable woman would consider his remark to be a sexual comment about the Duchess,” he says in his complaint.

Heckman complained of their complaints. He said he “felt that this over-policing of his innocently intended remark, and its being twisted into an accusation of sexual harassment, was unduly punitive and said so.”

Two days later he was fired, he said, without being questioned about the incident.

Heckman said the two women who complained had themselves both engaged in workplace commentary that objectified men.

The two “had been looking at a picture of a man, specifically, Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau, and stated that he is ‘hot,’ intended as a reference to Mr. Trudeau’s sex appeal,” his complaint says.

His employer “took no action on this complaint, undertook no investigation and imposed no discipline on the female employee.”

That, he says, is a double standard that punishes him as a male employee.

“Defendants enforced their policies regarding sexual harassment in a manner that was discriminatory, specifically that they dismissed a male employee with no investigation within two days, but took no action when placed on notice of a similar remark by female employees in the presence of witnesses,” says his complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York.

Statements of claim contain allegations that have not been proven in court. PBS has not yet filed a defence.

His lawyer, Jillian T. Weiss, said the firing does a disservice to complaints of workplace harassment.

“There are many serious cases of sexual harassment going on, as we know from the #MeToo movement, and then we have this one. That makes people question the seriousness of these issues,” Weiss said in an interview.

Heckman seeks changes to PBS practices and training to “provide equal employment opportunities for employees based on sex” as well as unspecified compensation for lost earning and for humiliation and loss of professional reputation.

Attempts to contact PBS NewsHour on Thursday were unsuccessful.

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