An employee tells you a customer just harassed them — what should you do? In Bivens v. Zep, Inc. the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals charts its own course in addressing employer liability for third-party harassment.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the majority of case law consistently hold that employers have a duty under federal laws to correct unlawful harassment by non-employees (e.g., independent contractors, customers, or clients) once they are aware of it. To illustrate this responsibility, the EEOC’s 2024 guidance provided the following example of how an employer should respond when a customer engages in inappropriate conduct:
While cleaning a guest room, Paloma, a housekeeper at a hotel, is cornered by a naked guest who propositions her for sex. Paloma immediately reports this conduct to her supervisor. Although the guest is not an employee of the hotel, because Paloma’s employer is aware of the sex-based harassment, it has a legal obligation to correct the harassment.
In other words, if an employer knows or should have known about harassing customer or client conduct, the employer must take immediate and appropriate corrective action.
The Bivens case has some notable similarities to the Paloma hypothetical above. Dorothy Bivens was visiting a client motel. The motel manager with whom she was meeting locked the office door and asked if they could date....
Summary This volume examines how AI-generated videos contributed to false narratives about Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients during the government shutdown, lending alleg...