Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson 1986
| Author | Daniel Brannen, Richard Hanes, Elizabeth Shaw |
| Pages | 640-646 |
Page 640
Petitioner: Meritor Savings Bank
Respondent: Mechelle Vinson
Petitioner's Claim: That under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 businesses are responsible for sexual discrimination in the workplace only when resulting in economic loss to the victim.
Chief Lawyer for Petitioner: F. Robert Troll, Jr.
Chief Lawyer for Respondent: Patricia J. Barry
Justices for the Court: Harry A. Blackmun, William J. Brennan, Jr., Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, Thurgood Marshall, Sandra Day O'Connor, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., William H. Rehnquist, John Paul Stevens, Byron R. White
Justices Dissenting: None
Date of Decision: June 19, 1986
Decision: Ruled in favor of Mechelle Vinson
Significance: This case became the cornerstone for answering sexual harassment questions raised under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Court, using Equal Employment Opportunities Commission guidelines, established that hostile environment is a form of sexual harassment even when the victim suffers no economic losses.
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Testifying at the 1991 Senate hearings on the confirmation of Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court, Ellen Wells talked about a form of gender or sex discrimination (unequal treatment of a person because of that person's sex) known as sexual harassment:
You blame yourself. Perhaps its the perfume I have on. . . And so you try to change your behavior because you think it must be me. . . And then I think you perhaps start to get angry and frustrated. But there's always that sense of powerlessness. And you're also ashamed. . . What did you do? And so you keep it in. You don't say anything. And if someone says to you: You should go forward, you have to think: How am I going to pay the phone bill if I do that? . . . So you're quiet. And you're ashamed. And you sit there and you take it.
Although Wells said this in the 1990s, history indicates that sexual harassment is not new. For example, the following quote from A History of Women in America, by C. Hymowitz and M. Weissman (1978), describes the plight of women factory workers in the early twentieth century.
Wherever they worked, women were sexually harassed by male workers, foremen and bosses. Learning to 'put up' with this abuse was one of the first lessons on the job. . . It was common practice at the factories for male employers to demand sexual favors from women workers in exchange for a job, a raise, or better position.
The Fourteenth Amendment, approved in 1868, guaranteed "equal protection of the laws" to all persons living in America. That is, no person or persons shall be denied the same protection of the laws that is enjoyed by other persons or groups. However, equal protection rights were not extended to women until almost a century later.
By the 1950s and 1960s various forms of discrimination including racial and gender discrimination, had become a focus of the nation. To help remedy (correct) various forms of...
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