Legal Question in Sexual Harassment in New Jersey

Re: What if the sexual harassment comes from a subordinate?

Interesting scenario. I wonder whether the secretary's version of the story will be the same as yours. It's situations such as this that give life to the old descriptive phrase "he said, she said."

Sex harassment (which is a defined form of gender discrimination) occurs in one of two situations. First is the "quid pro quo" situation, in which someone with power over the employee's job situation says, in effect, "sex or else." The secretary doesn't have that sort of authority over her boss, although her boss has it over her. Watch out for the reverse allegation -- that he forced her into it with threats of job loss.

The other situation is the "hostile environment," in which an unwilling employee is subjected to offensive sexual references, behavior, material, etc. because of his or her gender. It doesn't sound like the boss's problem is gender discrimination caused by a hostile environment, because he's not really offended by the secretary's advances; it sounds more like extortion.

I'd be very interested to hear how this one plays out.