Sexual Harassment in the Workplace Initiative

Sexual harassment is a barrier to equal opportunity in the workplace. For decades, the Employment Litigation Section has fought sexual harassment by enforcing Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a law that prohibits sexual harassment in workplaces. ELS can seek remedies for employment discrimination against state and local government employers.

In 2018, the Civil Rights Division announced that ELS would lead the Sexual Harassment in the Workplace Initiative (SHWI) to further our work of preventing and correcting sexual harassment in state and local government workplaces.

SHWI has several different components:

• a focus on investigating and litigating cases involving sexual harassment;
• ongoing identification of best practices and tools to prevent and correct sexual harassment;
• filing amicus briefs and statements of interest in sexual harassment cases;
• undertaking outreach efforts to engage stakeholders, to publicize the work of SHWI and ELS, and to educate workers and employers on their rights and responsibilities. As part of these efforts, SHWI welcomes hearing from attorneys who have filed either a Title VII sexual harassment lawsuit with legal issues that would benefit from an amicus filing or statement of interest by the Civil Rights Division or an EEOC Charge containing allegations of sexual harassment against a state or local government employer.

This website has information about sexual harassment in the workplace, links to resources for reporting sexual harassment in the workplace, and contact information for SHWI, ELS, and the Civil Rights Division.