Alaska Employment Law

One issue raised when the Employment Law Section discussed workplace investigations of sexual harassment charges last October was whether any external, objective standards governed such investigations.  In other words, are there any Daubert-like standards that might be used to critique those investigations, or even used by trial courts to admit or bar the results of those investigations?  The answer seems to be no, at this point.  There are no accreditation agencies for investigators, for instance.   

A related question goes to the other half of the Faragher-Ellerth defense: prevention of sexual harassment.  While the Alaska Supreme Court hasn’t expressly adopted the Faragher-Ellerth defense,* there’s little reasons to doubt that the Court will eventually adopt such a defense.  In any case, the legislature has enacted a law that bears on that defense - AS 23.10.440, which  requires larger employers (15 or more employees) to post an ASCHR-prepared notice that includes the (federal) definition of sexual harassment, advises employees how to contact state and federal agencies, and advises employees about agency filing deadlines.  (Note that the statute does not require the employer to advise of internal remedies, which perhaps suggests that the legislature does not view internal exhaustion as a prerequisite to pursuit of statutory claims.) 

California has now gone one step further.  The California Fair Employment and Housing Commission has promulgated regulations that mandate sexual harassment prevention training for supervisors of larger employers (50 or more).  California employers must provide at least two hours of such training every two years.  Trainers must be either experienced attorneys, HR professionals, or college/law school instructors.   The regulations spell out the training curriculum.  Those regulations go into effect August 17, 2007.

HT: Sheppard Mullin’s Labor and Employment Law Blog. 

*The Court has approvingly cited to those federal cases with regard to the definition of sexual harassment, in VECO, Inc. v. Rosebrock, 970 P.2d 906 (Alaska 1999), and Hanadel v. Blum, 2002 WL 987903 (Alaska Feb. 27, 2002)(unpub.).