Glendale Legal Blog

A camera operator on the hit crime procedural "Criminal Minds" has filed a lawsuit alleging that the show's director of photography sexually assaulted him hundreds of times between 2011 and 2019. The director of photography, California-based ABC Studios and New York-based CBS Corporation and Entertainment Partners are named as defendants in the lawsuit. Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. is also listed as a defendant despite having no connection to the long-running show. The litigation was filed on July 25 in Los Angeles.

The plaintiff claims that the director of photography touched him in a sexually suggestive way between two and three times per week during his eight years working on the show. He also alleges that the director of photography screamed at him on several occasions and threatened to have him fired. He is seeking a jury trial and unspecified damages for sexual harassment, discrimination, assault, emotional duress and retaliation.

Over 200 American corporations, including California-based Apple, Google and Walt Disney, have joined the court brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees from workplace discrimination. The brief was submitted by a group of five LGBTQ rights groups on July 2 in preparation for oral arguments on three discrimination cases scheduled to go before the high court on Oct. 8.

During the Obama administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission concluded that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act protected LGBTQ workers from discrimination. However, under the Trump administration, the Justice Department has argued that Title VII offers no such protections. So far, federal appeals courts in Cincinnati, Chicago and New York have ruled that federal law does indeed shield employees from discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. However, an Atlanta federal appeals court ruled in reverse. The Supreme Court is being asked to settle the matter.

When employees feel they have been treated unfairly by their employers, they often face difficult decisions. Although they may truly believe they are being mistreated in a manner that is against the law, they might hesitate to act for fear that nothing will come of the complaint except more negative treatment at work or, worse yet, termination. Often, the worker wants to continue on the job but under proper and legal conditions. However, even when a California employee does take the major step of filing a claim with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the results are not always as expected.

Established EEOC procedure requires a claim to be evaluated to determine if mediation may be helpful or if the employer should be provided an opportunity to answer the employee's allegations. Discrimination case experts indicate that the case may be dismissed for procedural reasons, such as an untimely filing or the lack of jurisdiction by the EEOC. Increasingly over the last several years, the EEOC has been designating more of its regular cases to its low-priority track, which essentially means that no action will be taken.

Despite advances made in recent years, many LGBT people in California are deeply concerned about discrimination in employment, housing, health care and other key areas of life. This is especially true at a federal level where courts have disagreed with one another about the extent to which existing civil rights law protects LGBT people against discrimination, typically under the banner of sex discrimination. The Democrats in the House of Representatives are pushing to institutionalize those protections explicitly in federal law, passing a proposal 236-173 to expand civil rights protections to LGBT people.

Eight Republicans joined all House Democrats to vote in support of the legislation called the Equality Act. It aims to update existing laws such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Fair Housing Act to include sexual orientation and gender identity as protected characteristics. Anti-LGBT discrimination would be prohibited as a form of sex discrimination in terms of employment, housing, access to loans, education and other forms of public accommodation. Most of the 2020 Democratic candidates for president came out with strong support for the legislation, which is backed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.