Read Case 11.4: Consenting to Sexual Harassment, located on page 420 in your textbook, then respond to the following questions. According to her own testimony, Vinson acquiesced to Taylor\u2019s sexual demands. In this sense, her behavior was \u201cvoluntary\u201d. Does the voluntary nature of her behavior mean she had \u201cconsented\u201d to Taylor\u2019s advances? Does it mean they were \u201cwelcome\u201d? Do you agree that Vinson\u2019s acquiescence shows there was no sexual harassment? Defend your position.<\/p>\n
CASE 11.4<\/a><\/p>\n Consenting to Sexual Harassment<\/p>\n IN THE CASE OF VINSON V. TAYLOR<\/i>, HEARD<\/b> before the federal district court for the District of Columbia, Mechelle Vinson alleged that Sidney Taylor, her supervisor at Capital City Federal Savings and Loan, had sexually harassed her.71<\/a> But the facts of the case were contested.<\/p>\n In court Vinson testified that about a year after she began working at the bank, Taylor asked her to have sexual relations with him. She claimed that Taylor said she \u201cowed\u201d him because he had obtained the job for her. Although she turned down Taylor at first, she eventually became involved with him. She and Taylor engaged in sexual relations, she said, both during and after business hours, in the remaining three years she worked at the bank. The encounters included intercourse in a bank vault and in a storage area in the bank basement. Vinson also testified that Taylor often actually \u201cassaulted or raped\u201d her. She contended that she was forced to submit to Taylor or jeopardize her employment.<\/p>\n Taylor, for his part, denied the allegations. He testified that he had never had sex with Vinson. On the contrary, he alleged that Vinson had made advances toward him and that he had declined them. He contended that Vinson had brought the charges against him to \u201cget even\u201d because of a work-related dispute.<\/p>\n In its ruling on the case, the court held that if Vinson and Taylor had engaged in a sexual relationship, that relationship was voluntary on the part of Vinson and was not employment related. The court also held that Capital City Federal Savings and Loan did not have \u201cnotice\u201d of the alleged harassment and was therefore not liable. Although Taylor was Vinson\u2019s supervisor, the court reasoned that notice to him was not notice to the bank.<\/p>\n Vinson appealed the case, and the Court of Appeals held that the district court had erred in three ways. First, the district court had overlooked the fact that there are two possible kinds of sexual harassment. Writing for the majority, Chief Judge Spottswood Robinson distinguished cases in which the victim\u2019s continued employment or promotion is conditioned on giving in to sexual demands and those cases in which the victim must tolerate a \u201csubstantially discriminatory work environment.\u201d The lower court had failed to consider whether Vinson\u2019s case involved harassment of the second kind.<\/p>\n Second, the higher court also overruled the district court\u2019s finding that because Vinson voluntarily engaged in a sexual relationship with Taylor, she was not a victim of sexual harassment. Voluntariness on Vinson\u2019s part had \u201cno bearing,\u201d the judge wrote, on \u201cwhether Taylor made Vinson\u2019s toleration of sexual harassment a condition of her employment.\u201d Third, the Court of Appeals held that any discriminatory activity by a supervisor is attributable to the employer, regardless of whether the employer had specific notice.<\/p>\n In his dissent to the decision by the Court of Appeals, Judge Robert Bork rejected the majority\u2019s claim that \u201cvoluntariness\u201d did not automatically rule out harassment. He argued that this position would have the result of depriving the accused person of any defense, because he could no longer establish that the supposed victim was really \u201ca willing participant.\u201d Judge Bork contended further that an employer should not be held vicariously liable for a supervisor\u2019s acts that it didn\u2019t know about.<\/p>\n In the movie North Country<\/i>, Charlize Theron plays a character who has no choice but to take on a miner\u2019s job in order to survive as the mother of two. Confronted with unrelenting verbal and physical abuse at the hands of her male coworkers, she fights back and ultimately wins a sexual harassment lawsuit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Read Case 11.4: Consenting to Sexual Harassment, located on page 420 in your textbook, then respond to the following questions. According to her own testimony, Vinson acquiesced to Taylor\u2019s sexual demands. In this sense, her behavior was \u201cvoluntary\u201d. Does the Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117645\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}