On April 29, 2024 – for the first time in more than twenty years – the EEOC issued its long-awaited updated Enforcement Guidance on Harassment in the Workplace. The updated guidance, which supersedes the EEOC’s decades-old guidance from the 1980’s and 1990’s, now addresses subjects arising in the modern workplace, including the rise of remote work, the #MeToo movement, and the U.S. Supreme Court’s  decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, 590 U.S. 644 (2020), in which the Court held that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act protects workers from discrimination based on their sexual orientation and gender identity. A few key updates that employers should be aware of include the following:  

Conduct in virtual environments

With the increase in virtual and remote work, the Guidance explains that conduct within a virtual work environment can constitute a hostile work environment. Stated differently, the existence of harassment and a hostile work environment is not limited exclusively to a physical workplace. To illustrate its point, the Guidance identified several example scenarios where harassment could exist in a virtual or remote workplace, such as sexist or ableist comments made during a video meeting or typed into a group chat, “racist imagery that is visible in an employee’s workspace while the employee participates in a video meeting,” or “sexual comments made during a video meeting about a bed being near an employee in the video image.”Continue Reading EEOC issues long-awaited enforcement guidance on workplace harassment