The U.S. Department of Justice has filed a federal lawsuit against the city of Ecorse, a community of 12,000 located in Wayne County, alleging sexual harassment of two female city employees by a former city clerk.
The two former employees, Katina Haynes and Tresa Thomas, allege that former Ecorse City Clerk Gary Sammons subjected them to sexual harassment including inappropriate touching and demanding sexual favors.
Continued – In May 2006, Haynes filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging that she and other co-workers were subjected to discrimination by being exposed to continual sexual harassment. She also said in the complaint that she notified then-Mayor Larry Salisbury of Sammons’ behavior but that no action was ever taken to address the problem.
The case is brought under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlaws discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Federal courts have long interpreted the ban on discrimination to include a ban on sexual harassment, concluding that such harassment is gender-based discrimination.
The key precedent on this is Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson, a 1986 case in which the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that sexual harassment creates a hostile work environment that amounts to unlawful discrimination on the basis of gender. One of the attorneys for the victim in that case was University of Michigan law professor Catherine MacKinnon.
Though Sammons and virtually the entire Ecorse city administration at the time of the alleged harassment (2005 and 2006) are now out of office, the lawsuit is filed against the city itself for “failing or refusing to take appropriate action to prevent and promptly correct the discriminatory treatment and its effects.”
