House urges all employers to create, enforce sexual harassment policies

• Author: Lee Rawles
• Pages: 60-61

#ABAToo

House urges all employers to create, enforce sexual harassment policies

By Lee Rawles

In one of its fi nal acts at the

2018 ABA Midyear Meeting,

the House of Delegates took

a stand against sexual harassment,

approving a resolution to urge all

employers to create and enforce

e ective sexual harassment policies.

“There can hardly be a resolution

more timely,” said Stephanie Scharf,

chair of the ABA Commission on

Women in the Profession, as she

introduced the resolution on the

meeting’s last day in Vancouver,

British Columbia.

Scharf pointed to earlier leadership

from the ABA on the issue of sexual

harassment, when it passed a 1992

resolution that sexual harassment

should not be tolerated.

Unfortunately, Scharf said,

“it continues

to a ect indi-

vidual people

by driving

them away

from work they enjoy and that they

are eminently qualifi ed to perform.”

Resolution 302, introduced by

the women’s commission, the Section

of Litigation and the Section of Civil

Rights and Social Justice, garnered

support from numerous other

ABA entities and minority bar

associations.

It urges that all employers adopt

and enforce policies to “prohibit,

prevent and promptly redress”

harassment and retaliation based on

“sex, gender, gender identity, sexual

orientation and the intersectionality

of sex with race and/or ethnicity.”

It also lays out specifi c suggestions

for what those policies should address

and how investigations and disciplin-

ary actions could be undertaken.

An amendment to the origi-

nal resolution was proposed by

Mark Schickman of Freeland

Cooper & Foreman in San

Francisco. He characterized the

language changes as easy fi xes

that could make a good resolution

a bit better and bring it in line with

recommendations from a 2016

Equal Employment Opportunity

Commission task force report on

harassment in the workplace.

Schickman’s fi xes included

items such as removing the word

confi dential from “confi dential

reporting” and replac-

ing it with “anony-

mous.” In current

employment law best

practices, “we train

people not to prom-

ise confi dentiality,”

he said.

The amendment

passed.

SPIRITED DEBATE

Gene Vance of the

Litigation Section

spoke in favor of

Your ABA || MIDYE AR MEETING REPORT

60 || ABA JOURNAL APRIL 2018

your Aba

EDITED BY LEE RAWLES

LEE.RAWLES@AMERICANBAR.ORG