Tampa & St. Petersburg Employment Attorney > Tampa Employment Law Attorney > Tampa Sexual Harassment Attorney

Tampa Sexual Harassment Attorney

Helping you avoid and halt hostile workplace environments

Saady & Saxe, P.A. provides employees and employers the tools to address workplace sexual harassment. With 60 combined years of discrimination law experience, our Tampa sexual harassment attorneys are a valuable resource in this complex and emotional area of the law.

For the employee

Sexual harassment at work can be annoying and frightening, and it can harm your career. Victims often feel powerless and alone. Our firm stands strong beside sexual harassment claimants, ensuring their claims are addressed, even if it requires litigating in court.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and most state antidiscrimination laws, prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender. Sexual harassment has been recognized as a form of sexual discrimination. It can include unwelcomed sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal, nonverbal, or physical conduct of a sexual nature.

Equal Opportunity Employment Commission guidelines state such conduct constitutes harassment when:

An employee must submit as a condition of employment.
Submitting to or rejecting sexual conduct is used as the basis for employment decisions, including wrongful termination.
Such conduct unreasonably interferes with an individual’s work performance or creates an intimidating, hostile or offensive working environment.

Harassment can be based not only on gender or sex, but also on sexual preference, race, religion, national origin, disability and age.

The employment law attorneys at Saady & Saxe, P.A. in Tampa champion the rights of all harassment victims and pursue claims before the EEOC and in court that hold sexual predators and their employers accountable. We put our large-firm experience on the employee’s side to even the odds in a fight to halt harassment, protect your rights and preserve your job.

Most claims must be filed with the EEOC within 360 days of the date of harassment. Harassment victims who prevail in a Title VII action may be entitled to back pay, compensatory and punitive damages, reinstatement, front pay and reasonable attorney fees. Contact our Tampa sexual harassment employment attorneys for more information.

For employers

We believe the best defense to a sexual harassment action is prevention. With so much at stake in a discrimination case — the company can be held liable for its supervisors’ actions in some instances — you owe it to your business to be prepared.

Our skilled sexual harassment attorneys serving Tampa assist with every facet of sexual harassment defense, from drafting sound policies to conducting investigations and providing representation before the EEOC. We counsel employers to take a strong, visible stance against sexual harassment and express a policy of zero tolerance. The following minimum measures should be taken:

Establish a written policy prohibiting sexual harassment and require each employee to sign it.
Post it and disseminate it to all employees.
Require all employees to attend periodic sexual harassment awareness training.
Establish a complaint procedure.
Once a complaint is made, conduct a thorough investigation.
Document all aspects of the investigation and keep the paperwork separate from all other documents.

Employers should remember they also have an obligation to the alleged harasser to ensure the investigation was adequate, the claim is valid and any discipline is not excessive.