To be able to sue for sexual harassment, a victim does not have to demonstrate a tangible psychological injury. An employer must investigate and take prompt remedial action when it receives a complaint of sexual harassment. In this case, four months was too long a delay in taking action. The Circuit Court overturned a lower court which in error had thrown out the suit. The Circuit Court stated as a broad generality that conduct by a male supervisor toward a female employee does not have to be explicitly sexual in nature to constitute unlawful sexual harassment.
Sexual harassment is fundamentally a form of gender discrimination.
Derogatory comments, hostility and intimidation directed at women, but not at men, are discriminatory, and a form of sexual harassment. This was a signal the physician did not consider women as deserving as men of full professional recognition. The physician asked the female resident in front of others why she had chosen a career in medicine rather than in nursing, or getting married and staying home with the children as another physician's wife was doing. The female resident was hospitalized twice, allegedly as a result of stress from her job situation. In this case it took four months until the director first spoke with the physician in question.