Hostile Environment Sexual Harassment

In employment law, hostile environment sexual harassment refers to a situation where employees in a workplace are subject to a pattern of exposure to unwanted sexual behavior from persons other than an employee's direct supervisor where supervisors or managers take no steps to discourage or discontinue such behavior. It is distinguished from "quid pro quo" sexual harassment, where a direct supervisor seeks sexual favors in return for something within the supervisor's powers, such as threatening to fire someone, or offering them a raise. Quid pro quo has been recognized as actionable for decades, but hostile environment has only been recognized as an actionable behavior since the late 1980s as courts have made findings that the loss of employment or constructive dismissal has been caused by such behavior. Some situations that have been ruled to constitute such a hostile environment are:Posting of sexually suggestive pictures in employee's cubicles;Consistently telling "dirty" jokes or stories where all employees in the work area can hear them;Tolerating employees who make sexually suggestive remarks about other employees within earshot of others;Allowing peer employees, clients, suppliers, delivery persons, or even customers (Lockard v. Pizza Hut, 162 F.3d 1062, 1073) to persist in unwanted attention, such as asking for dates;Allowing the use of derogative terms with a sexual connotation(e.g. "pussy", "girlie-man", "player") to be used to describe co-workers;Allowing frequent physical contact, even when it is not sexual.
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Where a person is subject to unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, or other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature to such an extent that it alters the conditions of the person's employment and creates an abusive working environment.

What exactly constitutes such an environment is often dependent on the specific circumstances and is a matter of continuing - and sometimes conflicting - legislative and judicial actions, determinations and clarifications.