EMPLOYMENT LAW (MGMT 445)
Spring, 2020
Professor Dale Hudson
March 18, 2020
I. INTRODUCTION AND STATEMENT OF THE ISSUES
Mary Anderson joined Acme, a company that works in the line of offering packaging solutions and providing services to food and consumer products manufacturers, on March 1, 2014 as an Account Representative. In her first five years, Anderson worked for Acme in different sales-related positions, working in both direct sales and sales support. Her supervisor was Dolinko, Acme’s Tustin facility. At that time, Anderson’s annual salary was $65,000.00, which was effective for 18 months. The company promised to evaluate the salary after the end of the first 18 months and put Anderson in the category where she could get $36,000 annual base salary in addition to a 3. % commission of total sales. Anderson’s contract was terminated in May, 2018 by Acme has been unemployed since. Anderson has recently become pregnant and she intends to get back to working after delivery of her child in June, 2020. Anderson claims that while she worked for Acme, her manager, Dolinko, was sexually harassing her throughout the time she was in her job. She further states that after every 3 general price increases in the industry, Dolinko usually disparaged her using references such as, “Mary, wear your price-increase shirt”. This was done both publicly and privately. Therefore, Anderson notes that the example that Dolinko gave made her other coworkers to subject her to unprofessional comments about her figure or attire. As a result, Dolinko, other managers, and other employees constantly made demeaning statements to Anderson, such as that she looked “hot,” or that she should let her blouse reveal more of her body by unbuttoning further. One co-worker would even ask Anderson what her “favorite position” was, and go ahead to recommend to her the porn she should watch. Anderson says that she usually ignored these offensive and inappropriate remarks, but she never laughed at them. Before her contract was eventually terminated, Anderson’s changed her work position twice in 2015. First, she was promoted to be the Account Manager. Secondly, she was promoted to Marketing Manager of the Retail Integration Institute (“RII”) in May of 2015, and her salary was increased to $75,000.
II. EVALUATION
A. Wrongful Termination/ Discrimination on Basis of Sex
From March 2014, Mary Anderson, who is the Plaintiff, worked as an Account Representative for the former employer, where the Defendant was her supervisor. In 2012, the Center Director, who was the Plaintiff’s supervisor, informed her both orally and in writing that she would be transitioned to a new permanent position in charge of a new program in the center. However, this did not seem to impress Anderson, who was the other executive director of the center.
1. Recitation of Applicable Law
§ 2000e-2(m) outlaws practices in employment which are inspired by both reasonable and illegal concerns, such as color, ethnicity, nationality, racial background, and religion (CBC). More precisely, since sexual orientation is directly linked to sex, any decision that discriminates others based on sexual orientation is a result of an illegitimate intention. Such an illegitimate intention, like the sex of an employee, goes against § 2000e-2(m). Consequently, it would make sense Mary Anderson to contain both § 2000e-2(m), which outlaws practices in employment that take into account an employee’s sexual preference.
2. Application of Law to Relevant Facts
The legal provision in § 2000e-2(m) forbids employment decisions that are stimulated partly by an employee sex. This provision explains the limits of discrimination based on an employee’s sex. The misunderstanding surrounding the difference between discrimination based on sex stereotype and discrimination based on sexual orientation resulted from the wrong application of previous Supreme Court cases by the lower courts. The Plaintiff is has concerns about sexual discrimination which made her to be placed in a befitting office. Later, the Plaintiff and her supervisor entered into a personal agreement, both orally and in writing. It is around this time that Mary was given an annual salary increase from $65,000 to $75,000. To strengthen her case, Mary’s employer failed to adhere to the earlier agreement upon completing her first 18 months. Acme awarded Mary a salary increase and then followed it with a contract termination. The Plaintiff was not allowed back to her job and her allegations against her former boss have added to the list of offenses.
B. Retaliation for Objecting to Harassment/ Wrongful Termination
Prejudice against an employee on the foundation of his or her relationship with an individual of the same sex also counts as amounts to profiling. A boss who treats with prejudice an employee based on his or her relationship with an individual of the matching sex, the boss will also in essence be treating with prejudice the employee based on his or her sex. Writing that prejudice against an employee for his or her refusal to adhere to sex pigeonholes counts as sex discrimination.
1. Recitation of Applicable Law
The explanation of sex needs to be founded on an ordinary, commonplace meaning of the term as Congress would have desired it to be read during the period when the law was ratified, in 1964. Therefore, the Court ought to read the law as it was understood by the public at the time that it was initially passed in 1964, instead of relying on the modern-day explanation (Albrechta). If the Supreme Court were called upon to make a ruling on the interpretation of the word “sex” according to the modern-day understanding, the meaning would not change because the word has largely maintained similar meaning to what it currently has.
2. Application of Law to Relevant Facts
Mary Anderson alleges that she faced sexual harassment during the time she worked for Acme. Thus, in addition to Acme failing to honor the contract it signed with Anderson, and terminating her contract prematurely, Mary’s manager and her colleagues also subjected her to sexual harassment. § 2000e-2(m) outlaws any employment decisions that are a result of one’s gender. The provision gives a definition that limits the discrimination based on an employee’s sex. The misunderstanding surrounding the difference between discrimination based on sex stereotype and discrimination based on sexual orientation resulted from the wrong application of previous Supreme Court cases by the lower courts. The Plaintiff is has concerns about sexual discrimination which made her to be placed in a befitting office.
C. Unlawful Harassment
Any form of harassment is forbidden by the law and the plaintiff has every right to sue the offenders.
1. Recitation of Applicable Law
The clause in 1978 when it approved the Pregnancy Discrimination Act to counter the court of law’s constricted understanding of the Act. In 1991, Congress revised Act to capture the broad interpretation that the Supreme Court had given the clause (Trudy). Prior to the 1991 amendment, the federal court had ruled in a number of cases that profiling since sex included additional provision than the law’s obvious forms of discrimination. The upper house also indirectly assimilated those court edicts by retaining the pertinent semantic of the Civil Rights Act of 1991.
2. Application of Law to Relevant Facts
The Civil Rights Act of 1991 outlaws sexual harassment. This section further forbids giving preferential treatment to an employee based on his or her gender. Equally, the Act also forbids any kind of discrimination against an employee based on gender. However, the section that supports this argument is based on a broad definition of gender and sex, and not a narrow understanding of sex. The Act stresses the importance of having an element of discriminatory treatment for the reason that an employee was either male or female, but not because of the sexual-orientation of an employee. In Anderson’s case, this law protects her rights from gender-based discrimination and sexual harassment.
D. Damages (assume plaintiff Anderson recovers on at least one claim)
Mary Anderson deserves to be compensated for both the salary she has missed since she was sacked, the discrimination she faced at Acme, and the current situation she is undergoing. Initially, she her starting salary was $65,000.00 per year, which was effective for 18 months. Although the company promised to appraise her salary after she had worked for the first 18 months and put Mary Anderson in the category of standard Account Manager Commission program where she would earn $36,000 annual base salary plus a 3. % commission of total sales, this did not happen. therefore, as compensation for wrongful dismissal and discrimination, Mary Anderson should be compensated for all the months she has been out of work and an additional pay for the psychological damages she suffered when she was being sexually discriminated at Acme.
III. CONCLUSION
Mary Anderson joined Acme on March 1, 2014 as an Account Representative earning an annual salary of $65,000.00. Although the salary was supposed to be revised and her position changed, it took a long time before both of these actions were effected. The initial promise was that after she had worked for Acme for the first 18 months, her position would change to standard Account Manager Commission and she would be put under a new program with an earnings of $36,000 annual base salary plus a 3. % commission of total sales. Eventually, Anderson’s contract was terminated after her pay was upgraded to $75,000.00.
Bibliography
CBC. “NY Skydive Teacher Claims Being Gay Got Him Fired”. CBS New York. October 5, 2010. Retrieved March 29, 2018.
David Albrechta. “Albrechta: Federal courts split on sexual orientation discrimination”. Durango Herald. 2018.
Trudy Ring. “Supreme Court Has Another Chance to Rule on Antigay Bias”. The Advocate. Retrieved June 24, 2018.
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