Juror perceptions of female-female sexual harassment: do sexual orientation and type of harassment matter?

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how mock jurors perceive female-female sexual harassment.

Participants read a case vignette depicting female-female workplace sexual harassment where the sexual orientation of the harasser (lesbian vs heterosexual) and type of sexual harassment (approach vs reject vs generalized) were randomly assigned across participants. Participants were asked to make a liability determination for the case. They were also asked to rate the unwanted conduct on several legally relevant dimensions (e.g. severity, pervasiveness, and unwelcomeness).

Results revealed that the sexual orientation of the harasser is an important factor used to make legal decisions in same-sex sexual harassment cases. Participants found the same conduct to be more severe, pervasive, unwelcome, and threatening when the harasser was lesbian than when she was heterosexual. As hypothesized, female participants found more evidence of discrimination than male participants.

These findings illustrate biases mock jurors may hold when making legal decisions in female-female sexual harassment cases.

Results are discussed in the context of decision-making models and possible future directions and interventions are explored.

The findings extend the literature on female same-sex sexual harassment.