In 2010, a man filed a federal sexual harassment lawsuit against his former employer, alleging that he had been subjected to workplace harassment for six months in 2007 and the former employer did nothing to stop the harassment.

The case was a same-sex sexual harassment lawsuit and the worker and his supervisor are each married men. A federal appellate panel recently overturned the trial court's ruling. In overruling the trial court, the appellate decision says the worker did not have to prove that his harasser was gay to prevail in the same-sex sexual harassment lawsuit.

In March 2007, a man began working on a survey crew with an engineering firm in Louisiana. Shortly after joining the crew, the worker's direct supervisor reportedly began brushing up against the new employee, making the worker feel uncomfortable. The supervisor's unwanted contact was accompanied by unwanted sexually charges comments and later escalated into sexually suggestive text messages, according to the lawsuit.

The hostile workplace claim did not settle and was tried before a jury. At the conclusion of deliberations, the jury found in favor of the employee, awarding a significant amount of damages. However, the trial court judge threw out the jury's findings, reasoning that the male sexual harassment victim had failed to prove that his direct supervisor was homosexual.

The judge said the plaintiff's evidence of unwanted touching and sexually charged comments in the workplace, "by itself does not amount to evidence establishing that [the supervisor] has a sexual interest in men." The court ruled in favor of the employer.

A federal appeals court has now overturned the trial judge's ruling and ordered that the court reinstate the jury's findings. The appellate panel says that sexual harassment applies in any situation where workplace discrimination "because of" sex occurs, "whether it be between members of the same or opposite sexes."

The appellate panel acknowledged that the U.S Supreme Court ruled in 1998 that "credible evidence" of homosexuality in a same-sex sex harassment case may be relevant to support a claim. However, the appellate panel says that the plaintiff in the recent case presented sufficient evidence to show that harassment occurred and the harassment was sexual in nature. The appellate court threw out the trial judge's ruling and decided in favor of the jury verdict granting damages to the harassed worker.

While the appellate ruling is not directly binding on federal courts in Florida, the ruling has caught the eye of sexual harassment attorneys nationwide. The case arose in another state and was decided in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Florida is in the 11th Circuit.

Source: U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, "Cherry v. Shaw Coastal, Inc.," Jan. 19, 2012