New CA Ruling On Harassment

Well those activist California Supreme Court judges have done it again!  This time, they've ruled that a manager who has affairs with female subordinates can create a hostile work environment for other women.

Well, "duh!" I say!!!  I mean seriously folks - it took the courts all these years to realize that if a manager is sleeping with some women at his company and not with others, how could he help but provide preferential treatment - favoritism - towards his intimates.

And if he's playing favorites, obviously there are going to be some women who are not going to get the choice assignments, shots at overtime or any other opportunities that might normally be given.  In today's workplace, that dog won't hunt.  To put it in more legal terms - that horny dog had better not hunt, or he'll be in bookoo trouble!

This case, by the way, involves a manager at a women's prison who was sleeping with a number of women at the same time (how he pulled off that one without being murdered is a wonder).  In any event, two women, who were not bedded by the manager in question, decided to sue the department of corrections in 1999.

They finally won their case when the Supreme Court overturned a lower court's decision that had held the women were not being subjected to sexual advances or treated any differently than men.  The Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, thought otherwise.

Chief Justice Ronald M. George wrote that when the behavior is so widespread that ``the demeaning message is conveyed to female employees that they are viewed by management as 'sexual playthings' or that the way required for women to get ahead in the workplace is by engaging in sexual conduct,'' it constitutes harassment."