Sexual Harassment Protections for Unpaid Interns
This paper examines a critical legal gap in sexual harassment protections: while employees are shielded from workplace sexual harassment under Title VII and comparable state statutes, unpaid interns are largely excluded from these protections because they do not meet the legal definition of "employee." Drawing on a Huffington Post article by Samantha Lachman and the course text by Bennett-Alexander and Hartman, the paper outlines which states have enacted intern-specific protections, which have legislation pending, and why this gap is particularly significant given that approximately three-quarters of unpaid interns are women. The paper argues for targeted legislative amendments and for extending vicarious liability standards to employer conduct toward interns.
- Introduction to Sexual Harassment: Overview of topic selection and paper scope
- Defining Sexual Harassment: Textbook definition and workplace examples
- The Legal Gap for Unpaid Interns: How employment statutes exclude unpaid interns
- Key Issues and Employer Accountability: Legislative fixes and vicarious liability arguments
- Conclusion: Call for legislative precision and reform
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What makes this paper effective
- Clearly connects a current event (the Huffington Post article) to foundational employment law concepts from the course text, grounding real-world analysis in academic frameworks.
- Identifies a concrete, underexamined legal loophole — the exclusion of unpaid interns from harassment statutes — and explains its mechanism precisely, noting that the word "employees" in legislation is the crux of the problem.
- Supports claims with specific examples: states that have enacted protections, states with pending legislation, and the statistic that roughly three-quarters of unpaid interns are women.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper models source synthesis effectively: it integrates a primary textbook definition of sexual harassment with a journalistic article, then uses both to build a layered argument. The author is careful to distinguish between what the law says and what it should say — a move that shows legal reasoning rather than mere opinion. The invocation of vicarious liability as a potential enforcement mechanism demonstrates disciplined use of a legal concept introduced in the course text.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a topic introduction and textbook-grounded definition, moves into a summary of the chosen article's findings, and then devotes its analytical core to two discrete points: the policy gap created by the word "employees" and the applicability of vicarious liability to employers of interns. A brief conclusion reiterates the tension between following the letter of the law and the need for legislative reform. The structure is straightforward and well-suited to a short analytical essay at the undergraduate level.
Introduction to Sexual Harassment
This paper assesses and reviews an article related to employment law, focusing on the topic of sexual harassment. The broad range of relevant topics in this area includes regulation of employment, the employee/employer relationship, the Civil Rights Act/Title VII, affirmative action, race, gender, sexual harassment, and sexual orientation. While the prevalence of sexual harassment training and the enforcement of related laws — not to mention litigation — would seem to reduce the practice among offenders, sexual harassment remains a significant and ongoing problem in the workplace.
Defining Sexual Harassment
As described in the course text, sexual harassment encompasses any behavior, action, or condition that is sexual in nature and that causes a person to feel sexually threatened, denigrated, or made uncomfortable. Examples include displaying a picture of a bikini-clad woman on a cubicle wall, telling sexually tinged jokes in the presence of people who are offended by them, and making sexual advances after the recipient has clearly rebuffed the other person.
As a general matter, telling such jokes, displaying such images, and engaging in these kinds of discussions are inadvisable in any professional setting. Doing so can lead to disciplinary action, termination, lawsuits, or some combination of the three (Bennett-Alexander & Hartman, 2007).
The Legal Gap for Unpaid Interns
The article chosen for this paper appeared on the Huffington Post website. Its central argument is that while sexual harassment rules and legislation commonly protect employees, the same protections typically do not extend to unpaid interns. The language of most state statutes is framed around employees, and because unpaid interns do not meet the legal definition of that term, they are technically unprotected.
Only a small number of states have addressed this oversight. Those that have enacted protections for interns include California, Oregon, New York, Washington D.C., and Maryland. States with legislation pending to close this gap include Illinois and Connecticut, while Michigan and New Jersey have introduced bills that ultimately failed to pass.
The situation is further complicated by the fact that interns frequently do not report incidents of sexual harassment for a variety of reasons. This is particularly significant because approximately three-quarters of unpaid interns are women (Lachman, 2015).
Conclusion
It is quite unsettling that unpaid interns are not protected under the law in the same way that employees are. Nevertheless, it is important that the letter of the law be followed, since allowing for discretionary interpretation where statutes are silent creates its own risks. At the same time, legislators must fulfill their responsibility by ensuring that the language of employment laws is precise and fully encompasses all individuals, situations, and protections that should be covered. The Civil Rights Act, Title VII framework offers a model — the task now is to extend its spirit to those currently left out.
References
Bennett-Alexander, D., & Hartman, L. (2007). Employment law for business. McGraw-Hill/Irwin.
Lachman, S. (2015). A shocking number of states don't protect unpaid interns from discrimination & sexual harassment. The Huffington Post. Retrieved October 31, 2015, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/27/unpaid-interns-harassment_n_7453826.html
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