{"id":296485,"date":"2017-02-25T10:59:04","date_gmt":"2017-02-25T09:59:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/unwelcome-hugs-may-create-a-hostile-work-environment-court-says\/"},"modified":"2017-02-25T10:59:04","modified_gmt":"2017-02-25T09:59:04","slug":"unwelcome-hugs-may-create-a-hostile-work-environment-court-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/unwelcome-hugs-may-create-a-hostile-work-environment-court-says\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Unwelcome hugs\u2019 may create a hostile work environment, court says"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has revived a case from 2012 that alleges too many unwanted hugs can create a hostile work environment and constitute sexual harassment.<\/p>\n

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On Thursday, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reopened a sexual harassment lawsuit<\/a>\u00a0against Yolo County, California and county Sheriff Edward Prieto.<\/p>\n

The suit claims that Prieto created a sexually hostile work environment by greeting claimant Victoria Zetwick with \u201cunwelcome hugs\u201d<\/em> over 100 times during the 12-year period she worked.<\/p>\n

Zetwick, the correctional officer who sued the sheriff, also based her Title VII<\/a>\u00a0sexually hostile work environment claim on the fact that she saw Prieto hug and kiss many other female employees, but did not see him hug any male employees.<\/p>\n

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Read more<\/p>\n


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The court documents say Zetwick only saw Prieto shake hands with male employees. Prieto claims, however, that he did hug male employees on occasion, but Zetwick simply wasn\u2019t present at the time.<\/p>\n

Prieto\u2019s lawyers have contended that, if the accused did hug women more than men, it was due to \u201cgenuine but innocuous differences in the ways men and women routinely interact with members of the same sex and the opposite sex.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The defendants claim that Zetwick has admitted that all of Prieto\u2019s hugs lasted only for a few seconds, took place in front of other people, and never involved sexual comments or other touching, but Zetwick contends that the \u201cchest to breast\u201d<\/em> hugs had \u201csexual overtones.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Zetwick also asserted that Prieto once kissed her during an awards ceremony to congratulate her on her recent marriage to another deputy.<\/p>\n

She also claims Prieto\u2019s touching caused her constant stress and anxiety at work, testifying that the resultant stress made it difficult to concentrate, caused her to cry at work, and made her resort to taking medication to sleep.<\/p>\n

The judges say a reasonable jury could find such conduct from a supervisor \u201cabusive\u201d and have reopened the case to let a jury decide.<\/p>\n

Zetwick originally filed the lawsuit against Prieto and the county in 2012. The county moved for summary judgment, arguing that hugging was within the scope of \u201cordinary workplace socializing.\u201d<\/em> The District Court agreed with the defendants\u2019 contention and the case was dismissed in 2014. Zetwick immediately filed an appeal.<\/p>\n

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals granted the appeal because it could not concur with the lower court\u2019s decision that Prieto\u2019s conduct was \u201cneither severe nor pervasive enough to alter the conditions of [Zetwick\u2019s] employment,\u201d<\/em> as the frequency of the hugging had not been determined in the earlier case.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Via RT<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Published time: 25 Feb, 2017 09:19 The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has revived a case from 2012 that alleges too many unwanted hugs can create a hostile work environment and constitute sexual harassment. On Thursday, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reopened a sexual harassment lawsuit\u00a0against Yolo County, California and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":296486,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-296485","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296485\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/296486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}