Dating in the workplace
curious
2 Posts
The organization that I work for recently adopted a policy forbidding ALL romantic relationships. Current relationships that are in a married status are allowed but in a non-married relationship one of employees will be terminated. Certain classes of employees may be allowed to transfer to a different location, however other classes are "prohibited" from having romantic relationships with another employee. Is this legal?
Comments
Anti-fraternizations are hard to enforce. The relationships can be hard to detect and it's easy for people to start saying "what about John and Mary? Everyone knew about them, why are you picking on us?" They're also hard to defend: you have a constitutional right to a freedom of association. That's why most companies have a notification requirement rather than an anti-fraternization requirement. To whatever extent this will vary it will vary on a circuit by circuit basis. My understanding is that the 5th and 8th circuits are very hostile to anti-fraternization policies. I am not aware of any state laws in place.
If you are in a relationship that is important to you, then I would split the cost of an attorney who you will have consider the matter for you. If the policy is unenforceable, I would have the attorney write a letter to the employer stating that (s)he represents two current employees in a relationship and that the company's policy will lead to legal action if the company moves to enforce it against the represented employees. If the attorney feels that (s)he must reveal your names, then you will want to be very clear with your partner about how far you are going to go with this and how strongly you believe your attorney.
EDIT: There is one caveat: if your work involves security clearance, government funding, or if the employer is the government, the rules may be different for you.
I agree that this is going to be on a case by case basis depending on which circuit you are in. I have done some research on this issue. Most companies argue the need for such a policy to try to prevent sexual harassment issues from arising when the relationship goes sour (and more relationships go sour then end with marriage). One thing that I found is that if a company can prove they have an anti-fraternization policy that is strictly enforced then the burden of proof is on the employee(s) that were terminated to prove that their constitutional rights were violated. The cases I have looked at have had mixed results.
From an employers prospective I will tell you this is a double edged sword. You don't want to get involved in your employee's personal business, but you want to prevent any type of sexual harassment situation from occurring as well as disruptions to your organization. When you have relationships with employees going on, it will more than likely go sour. When it does you hope both parties are able to handle the breakup in a mature way, but unfortunately that doesn't always happen. You may have one that wanted the breakup and one that doesn't so that one starts harassing the others. You may have employees that take sides with one party or the other causing work interuptions. The list goes on and on. In order to prevent this from happening (and from an employee trying to sue you from sexual harassment) employers have put these anti-fraternization policies in place.