Sexual harassment cases surged last year in wake of #MeToo: Seyfarth report

The ripple effects of #MeToo continue to spread. The movement that highlighted workplace power dynamics and ended the careers of numerous men across various industries also spawned a drastic increase in sex-based discrimination filings at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission last fiscal year, according to a recent report by Seyfarth Shaw.

Hospitality industry & retaliation claims are EEOC priorities

The annual report, “EEOC-Initiated Litigation,” stated that the agency filed 41 cases alleging sexual harassment, 11 of which were brought in the last three days of the fiscal year alone. And it recovered nearly $70 million through litigation and administrative enforcement of sexual harassment issues in fiscal 2018, up from $47.5 million in 2017, according to an EEOC press release that the report cited.

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“Woven throughout [this year’s publication] is the #MeToo movement and how it has truly permeated pretty much every aspect of the EEOC litigation agenda in 2018,” said Christopher DeGroff, a Seyfarth Shaw partner in the Chicago office and co-author of the report.

“The EEOC operates on a strategy enforcement plan where it sets the strategic priorities, and ordinarily those are fairly distinct buckets,” he added. “But this year we saw a general vectoring of all of those, or many of those, to address the #MeToo movement and harassment generally.”

For example, DeGroff said, a couple of EEOC strategic priorities apart from workplace harassment include the protection of vulnerable workers such as migrant workers or younger women, particularly in the hospitality industry and retaliation.

Doubled down on sexual harassment against vulnerable workers

“While in the past the EEOC has had a distinct view on these, [last year] it doubled down on sexual harassment against these vulnerable workers,” he said. “Much of this year’s EEOC retaliation [claims] were based on retaliation for reporting harassment.”

The EEOC also maintained its focus on sexual harassment through the use of press releases like the one citing its recovery figures, DeGroff said. In fiscal year 2018, the agency released 65 press releases related to sexual harassment cases, according to the Seyfarth Shaw report.

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“The EEOC is using its press releases as a way of getting its cautionary tale out to employers,” said DeGroff, adding that this publicity extends even to the initial filing of a lawsuit. “That is particularly troublesome for employers because often you have a press release that is quoting the allegations before they’ve been through any stage of scrutiny.”

Aggressive litigation expected to continue

Moving forward into the new year, DeGroff said he expects the EEOC to continue its aggressive litigation of the #MeToo-related sexual harassment claims that it pursued in 2018 and the year before.

The agency is “looking for a way of using the public attention around the movement as a propellant for its litigation agenda that, frankly, goes back before #MeToo,” he said.

Related: Rethink sexual harassment prevention training

It may be somewhat hamstrung in doing so, however, DeGroff added, because not only is the EEOC currently shuttered as a result of the partial government shutdown, but only two of its five commissioners are seated due to a political holdup in confirming President Donald Trump’s picks for the spots.

“Coming back, the EEOC, especially in 2019, is going to be looking for a way to continue to do business consistent with its agenda but during a time when there is significant political swirl around administrative agencies generally,” he said.

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Kristen Rasmussen (krasmussen@alm.com) is an Atlanta-based ALM Media reporter who covers corporate legal departments and in-house attorneys, Georgia government and health care.