What conduct constitutes a hostile work environment? How can a municipality be held responsible for a hostile work environment created by its employees? New York’s federal appellate court recently addressed these questions in the case Legg v. Ulster County. Today’s Long Island employment law blog discusses these issues, and how the Court of Appeals decided the case.
At Famighetti & Weinick PLLC, one of the leading inquiries we see as Long Island employment lawyers is “I’m working in a hostile work environment.” A hostile work environment is a legal term of art. While many employees subjectively consider themselves as facing a hostile work environment, the law does not recognize all hostile environments as being actionable in court. In other words, the law does not allow all employees to sue their employers for a hostile work environment.
Among other things, to sue an employer for a hostile work environment, the hostility must be based on a protected characteristic of the employee (such as sex, gender, age), the conduct must be sufficiently “severe or pervasive,” and, at least under federal law, there must be a basis for holding the employer responsible for the actions of its employees. These “elements” of a hostile work environment claim are not black and white issues, so employers and employees often hotly dispute these points in court.