White Papers for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)

Employee Internet and Email Abuse Mapping the Legal Minefield for Employers

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Any form of sexual harassment is capable of amounting to unlawful discrimination for which the employer will be liable. Harassment by Email text, Emails containing Explicit Images or the showing of Explicit Images, for example sexual images sent in an email, fall squarely into this arena. The key element that dictates whether or not conduct amounts to harassment is whether the victim finds the conduct in question unwelcome. Thus it is irrelevant if another employee considers the same email content or image to be amusing or otherwise inoffensive; the point is that if an employee finds the content or image offensive, and if the material in it is sexual, then it becomes unlawful harassment. Where harassment is sexual in nature, the victim would be able to take a claim of unlawful discrimination to an employment tribunal and these Courts have taken the view consistently over a period of many years that sexual harassment is capable of causing a injury to the employee and is thus a form of unlawful discrimination. The same principles apply to racial and disability harassment.

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