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Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services

At issue in Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services (1998) was whether an employer could be liable for same-sex sexual harassment. Even though Oncale was not set in a school context, the U.S. Supreme Court's holding that such a claim is actionable should be instructive for all educators.

Facts of the Case

Joseph Oncale worked for Sundowner Offshore Services as a roustabout on a Chevron Oil Company oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico, as one member of an eight-man crew. Two other members of the crew were supervisors. During the time Oncale worked on the platform, the two supervisors and another employee repeatedly subjected him to sex-related, humiliating actions in front of the rest of the crew. The supervisors also physically assaulted him in a sexual way, and one of the supervisors threatened to rape Oncale, who then complained to higher supervisors. Even so, the second-level supervisors did nothing to change the situation.

Oncale complained to a safety compliance clerk that the two supervisors picked on him, too; the clerk then called Oncale a name connected with homosexuality. Oncale eventually quit his job but asked that his employment record show that he left due to verbal abuse and sexual harassment. In his deposition, Oncale said that he feared that if he did not leave his job, he would have been raped or forced to engage in sexual relations.

Oncale subsequently unsuccessfully sued his employer, alleging that he was subjected to employment discrimination because of his sex. A federal trial court in Louisiana, in granting the employer's motion for summary judgment, maintained that a male employee cannot sustain a cause of action under Title VII for sexual harassment by male coworkers. On appeal, the Fifth Circuit affirmed in favor of the employer.

The Court's Ruling

On further review, at issue before the Supreme Court was whether workplace sexual harassment can violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act when the harasser and the harassed are of the same sex. In a unanimous decision penned by Justice Scalia, the Court reversed in favor of the plaintiff, ruling that sex discrimination consisting of same-sex sexual harassment is actionable under Title VII. Justice Thomas filed a one-sentence concurrence, in which he specified that a “plaintiff must plead and ultimately prove Title VII's statutory requirement that there be discrimination because of… sex” (Oncale, p. 83).

In its analysis, the Supreme Court observed that Title VII protects both men and women. To this end, the Court pointed out that in a previous case, Castaneda v. Partida (1977), set in the context of racial discrimination, it never accepted the view that a member of one definable group would not discriminate against other members of the same group. The Court noted that the judiciary has generally had little trouble in recognizing the application of Title VII to same-sex harassment involving a tangible work benefit such as quid pro quo sex harassment. At the same time, the Court acknowledged a perplexing array of legal standards in the lower courts when it came to hostile work environment sexual harassment. The Court explained that some lower courts viewed sexual harassment in the workplace as always actionable, regardless of the characteristics of the harasser and the harassed, while others believed that same-sex claims were never possible under Title VII. The Court indicated that a third group of courts took the position that a same-sex Title VII claim is actionable if the harasser is homosexual and motivated by sexual desire. In Oncale, the Court settled the issue that Title VII protects individuals from same-sex discrimination on the basis of sex and that it makes no difference as to a harasser's sex, sexual orientation, or motivation.

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