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May

13

Ohio Civil Rights Commission & Sexual Harassment in Ohio


I’ve been reviewing the Ohio Civil Rights Commission’s website to try to understand its role in enforcing allegations of state law sexual harassment violations. From the OCRC 2007 annual report:

In a motivating speech [at an OCRC reception in 4/07], Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann spoke of partnership. He spoke to working with the OCRC to “increase consequences for those who trample on the rights of people,” and to “expand the list of people who are protected by our laws to be more reflective of our community.” On the appointment of Chair Donaldson as the first female Chairperson of the OCRC, Mr. Dann said, “This is just the beginning. We are going to make history in Ohio.” [emphasis mine]

I guess Dann wasn’t kidding.

I am not clear on how the EEOC and OCRC relate to one another, the former being federal and the latter being state. With the AG’s office’s EEOC complaints related to the most recent situation, I don’t recall hearing a word from the OCRC. I don’t recall reading about why the women who filed EEOC complaints didn’t also file with the OCRC. Anyone?

Here’s the OCRC’s description of sexual harassment:

Sexual harassment is any unwanted attention of a sexual nature from someone in the workplace that creates discomfort and/or interferes with the job. It can take the form of verbal abuse, such as insults, suggestive comments and demands. Sexual harassment can also consist of leering and subtle forms of pressure for sexual activity, physical aggressiveness such as touching, pinching and patting, and can end up as attempted rape and rape. “Quid Pro Quo” is the term used to describe harassment when submission to or rejection or sexual demands becomes the basis for employment decisions directly affecting an employee. “Hostile Work Environment” is the term used to describe a work environment that is created when continued sexual harassment produces an intimidating and offensive work atmosphere, which negatively impacts an employee’s work performance. Victims face harassment from fellow employees, supervisors, co-workers, clients or customers. Sexual harassment can be committed by a woman against a man, or by members or one sex against others of the same gender. However, the majority of offenses are men against women.

Here’s a description of how the OCRC functions, its jurisdiction and what it can do. Oh, and that description ends with this:

The Attorney General’s Office, Civil Rights Section, represents the Commission in all matters of litigation.

Maybe that’s why the Espy effort should have been foregone in the first place, and why the OCRC didn’t handle it, except that the folks on the OCRC are appointed by the Governor and the OCRC isn’t connected to Dann’s office – at least on the organizational chart.

I haven’t been able to find information on the AG’s Civil Rights Section – mentioned above. I did find this section about what people are supposed to do if they think that they’ve experienced discrimination (go to OCRC).

[Interesting aside: A quick look at the AG's organizational chart shows that some folks who've been fired are still on it (it's dated February 2008, but I'm assuming for now that it's accurate; feel free to provide updates). Susan Choe appears to be in charge of Civil Rights and Election Law (but I don't think that's necessarily the same as a Civil Rights Section) and Mike McPhillips is in charge of Employment. Here's a bit more about McPhillips, who used to be a Franklin County Common Pleas magistrate.]

Under the OCRC site’s section, Enforcement, we learn that only a preponderance of evidence is required to find probable cause that discrimination has occurred. I never knew that. Then again, I can’t learn everything there is to know about this area of law in a few minutes or Google searches, but here’s some info from the OCRC’s 2007 annual report.

On Page 15, you can see that there are 34 categories of “Alleged Issues of Charges Filed” for FY 2006 (that might be a typo, because the dates are 7/06 to 7/07 – I would think that’s FY 2007?).

There is a category for “sexual harassment” but there are also categories for “harassment,” “intimidation” and other allegations that might be related. Oddly, retaliation, gender and pregnancy are lumped together on a chart on Page 14, but these categories don’t correspond directly to the categories listed on Page 15. Notice on Page 13, the number of cases taken in has increased by 1100 since 1998, but only half of that additional number adds up to more cases “produced.” I imagine this has to do with newly recognized categories, among other things.

We’ll stick with sexual harassment for now. There’s no grand total for all charges filed by issue, but when I add them up, I get a total of 8948. That’s much higher than the intake number of 6144 stated in the opening letter of the annual report, but it’s reasonable to expect that some cases had multiple allegations.

Of those 8948, according to the 2007 annual report, 333 had to do with sexual harassment (discharge – 2502 and harassment – 1374 – were the largest categories). In previous years, according to the annual reports for those years:

2006: 292

2005: 479

2004: 348 out of 8461

2003: 348 out of 9055

Interesting, but I don’t really know what it means, yet. I’m looking forward to finding out.

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By Jill Miller Zimon at 10:16 am May 13th, 2008 in Gender, Government, Law, Marc Dann, Ohio, Politics, Social Issues, Women 

Comments

2 Responses to “Ohio Civil Rights Commission & Sexual Harassment in Ohio”

  1. 1 lilatovcocktail on May 13th, 2008 9:14 pm

    Good find, Jill. The irony here is so thick you could eat it with a spoon (but use a fork to get every delicious bite).

    Dann’s on-again, off-again resignation today was kind of a nightmare for honest, truth-lovin’ bloggers and reporters just trying to report the news accurately and fairly.

  2. 2 Jill Miller Zimon on May 13th, 2008 9:28 pm

    Thanks, Lila. Frankly, I can’t for the life of me understand why not one single article since the whole thing began, even as rumors came out, has done a good, narrative review of the status of these laws and their use in Ohio governmental agencies over the years – is it common? uncommon? who suffers? what are the accommodations? how many go on to be lawsuits and so on.

    Now – to be fair, I get a lot of my news from the Internet, MSM sources via feeds, but still, not from print newspapers per se (though magazines and often news outlet websites). And I have a batch of Google alerts on “marc dann” and other phrases that I would have thought would bring up this stuff if it was out there.

    But nothing.

    Anyway – I guess I finally got to the point where, if no one else is going to try and write about it, even though I don’t know a lot, I can start. This is a blog after all. :)

    Thanks again.

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