9th Circuit Upholds $1M Farmworker Sexual Harassment Award
A federal appeals court has upheld a verdict by a California jury that awarded over $1 million in an employment discrimination case to a farmworker who said her supervisor repeatedly raped her and her employer retaliated when she complained. Her employer had argued to the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that evidence was improperly admitted and that punitive damages weren’t justified.
“In a six-week trial in a Fresno courtroom in 2005, [Olivia] Tamayo described several rapes at the hands of her supervisor, who she said menaced her with a knife and a gun and threatened that he would kill her husband if she told him,” reports the San Francisco Chronicle. When she sought help from a sheriff’s officer, a representative of her employer, Harris Farms of Coalinga, allegedly intervened, and criminal charges were never filed.
Tamayo brought her case with the help of the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Her jury award included $500,000 in punitive damages, which was later reduced to a $300,000 statutory limit, reports the Fresno Bee. However, with attorney fees, it exceeds $1 million, the EEOC says in a press release.
“I have talked to many farmworker women who did not know that they were protected from being abused in the fields,” Tamayo tells the EEOC. “This decision is for everyone who thinks that it is useless to step forward.”
