Press coverage of Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Tex., usually focuses on her megalomania (“‘I am a queen, and I demand to be treated like a queen,’ Jackson-Lee once said”), her race-baiting (like claiming the Tea Party is an offshoot of the Ku Klux Klan, and that the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina was racist), and her amazing ignorance (like not knowing that astronauts landed on the Moon, not Mars; and not knowing what happened in the Vietnam War).
But being a race-baiting megalomaniac is no crime.
It is against the law, however, to racially harass your employees. And a recent story in Daily Caller suggests that many of her black employees could have viable racial-harassment claims against her. (Yes, her black employees – the story, “Congressional Bosses from Hell: Sheila Jackson Lee,” suggests that for all her public race-baiting directed at whites, in her own office, she treats her fellow blacks worse than she treats members of other races).
To violate federal workplace harassment law, racial harassment must be either “severe” or “pervasive” enough to create a “hostile work environment.” Jackson-Lee’s harassment was reportedly pervasive:
Other employees described a pattern of “yelling,” “screaming and swearing.
The harassment was not just offensive, but humiliating: A Jackson-Lee aide recounted an instance in which she was harassed by Jackson-Lee, “the time her parents came to Washington to visit: ‘They were really excited to come to the congressional office. They’re small town people, so for them it was a huge deal. They were actually sitting in the main lobby waiting area….[Jackson Lee] came out screaming at me over a scheduling change. Called me a ‘stupid idiot. Don’t be a moron, you foolish girl’ and actually did this in front of my parents, of all things.’”
Jackson-Lee’s harassment altered her employees’ work environment, rendering it hostile and abusive. On days in which Jackson-Lee was absent, “the sounds emanating from inside” her Congressional office were full of “pleasant laughter and conversation. ‘You could tell when she wasn’t there.’” But when Jackson-Lee was present in the office, “a different set of sounds often came through closed doors to Jackson Lee’s office: screaming and, many times, crying.” She forced employees to wait hours for her, hours after the end of the business day, forcing them to stay in the office until “two, three, four o’clock in the morning.”
She is reportedly “harder on black staff.” Black staffers lamented that she was “far harsher to the African Americans who work for her. ‘“You stupid mother-effer” was like a constant,’ says one,” uttered “‘all the time . . towards her African American staffers,’” whom “‘she felt comfortable enough’” around “‘to really curse out,’” unlike “‘other ethnic groups in the office.’”
The fact that she did not use the N-word or racist language does not mean her employees might not have a case against her for racial harassment. Federal appeals court rulings like Aman v. Cort Furniture (1996) make clear that an employer who abuses employees based on their race can still be held liable for racial harassment even if the employer never uses any racist language.
Harassment need not cause physical or psychological injury to be actionable. But if it does cause such harm, that can become a factor in favor of liability, under the Supreme Court’s decision in Harris v. Forklift Systems (1993). Jackson-Lee’s relentless harassment, one employee claimed, made that employee physically ill. “One staffer recalls a frank conversation with his doctor, who told him he needed to quit. “It’s your life or your job,” the doctor told him, warning that the stress and long hours were wreaking havoc on his body.
If Jackson-Lee engaged in physically threatening behavior, like throwing a cell phone, that is another factor supporting liability under the Supreme Court’s Harris decision.
Discrimination and harassment by government officials violate not only civil-rights laws, but also, in some cases, the Constitution itself. (See Davis v. Passman (1979)).
