What Constitutes Prohibited Discrimination and Harassment

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What is Prohibited Discrimination And Harassment?

In general, prohibited discrimination and harassment is any verbal, visual, physical, or any other kind of conduct that is connected with an individual based on prohibited grounds, such as race, gender, or religion, and impacts the terms or conditions of employment or receipt of services or creates an intimidating, hostile, or offensive environment. Prohibited discrimination and harassment are illegal and unacceptable.

Prohibited discrimination and harassment generally carry a component of power differential between individuals; therefore, a person who seems to acquiesce to discriminatory or harassing conduct may still be considered a victim of prohibited harassment. Prohibited discrimination and harassment can occur between an employee and a manager; between co-workers; between faculty members; between a faculty, staff, or student and a customer, patient, vendor, or contractor; between a student and a faculty member or another student; between men and women; or between members of the same gender.

A subset of prohibited discrimination and harassment is sexual harassment. Sexual harassment is any unwelcome sexual advance, request for sexual favor, and any other behavior of a sexual nature as outlined below:

Quid Pro Quo
Submission to or rejection of such conduct is used either explicitly or implicitly as a basis for any decision affecting terms or conditions of an individual's employment, receipt of services, or academic activities. More…

Hostile Environment
Such conduct has the effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual's work performance, receipt of services or academic activities, or creates an intimidating, hostile or offensive environment. If it takes place in the teaching context, it must also be persistent, pervasive, and not germane to the subject matter. More…

Prohibited discrimination and harassment may involve a tangible injury (economic loss, a poor recommendation, lowered grades) but it does not have to. Conduct that creates poor working conditions for an employee or impairs a student's access to education may also constitute prohibited harassment.

Conduct is not always offensive or unwelcome in the same degree when perceived by different people. Courts use a "reasonable person"(*) standard to determine whether contested behavior constitutes prohibited discrimination and/or harassment. The reasonable person standard takes into account the perspectives of both men and women and is sensitive to the professional position and power of the people involved.

A third person offended by harassing behavior among willing participants may, in sufficiently severe or pervasive circumstances, be a victim of prohibited harassment.

* In Ellison v. Brady, 924 F2d 872 (9th Cir 1991), the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over our geographical area, elaborated on Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson, 477 US 57 (1986), and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's guidelines and announced a "reasonable woman" test for determining when sexual conduct on the job is unwelcome and offensive.

See also OHSU's policies regarding Equal Opportunity Complaint Procedure, Equal Opportunity, Harassment, Sexual Harassment, Employment of Family Members, Conflicting Consensual Relationships, Acceptable Use of Computing and Telecommunications Resources, and OHSU's Vision and Core Values for further definitions and examples of prohibited conduct.

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What is Prohibited Discrimination And Harassment?