For those of you who managed to get away and have not kept up on your advance sheets this summer, August brought an interesting (and colorful) Title VII decision from the Southern District concerning a seemingly simple issue many of us face, but as to which there may be no clear answer: Who is the employer?
The defendant in St. Jean v. Orient-Express Hotels1 is a U.S. hotel and resort company that was sued in New York for sexual harassment—the result of a kiss on a beach in St. Maarten. By itself, this is perhaps not such an unusual outcome. These days, U.S. employers may be sued for alleged sexual harassment that occurs anywhere in the world, if the employee is a U.S. citizen, because Title VII and most of the other federal anti-bias laws have explicit extraterritorial effect.
