Current through Register Vol. XLI, No. 50, December 13, 2024
Section 77-3-4 - Religious Harassment4.1. Harassment in the workplace on the basis of religion is an unlawful employment practice. Unwelcome comments, jokes, acts and other verbal or physical conduct may constitute religious harassment when:4.1.1. Submission to such conduct is made either explicitly or implicitly a term or condition of an individual's employment;4.1.2. Submission to or rejection of such conduct by an individual is used as the basis for employment decisions affecting such individual; or4.1.3. Such conduct has the purpose of effect of substantially interfering with an individual's work performance or creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive working environment.4.2. An employer is responsible for its acts and those of its officers, agents and supervisory employees with respect to religious harassment regardless of whether the specific acts complained of were authorized or even forbidden by the employer and regardless of whether the employer knew or reasonably should have known of their occurrence, except that the employer is not responsible if the officer, agent or supervisory employee was acting outside the scope of his or her employment.4.3. With respect to persons other than those mentioned in section 4.2 above, an employer is responsible for acts of religious harassment in the workplace where the employer, or its agents or supervisory employees, knew or reasonably should have known of the conduct or expressly or impliedly authorized or ratified such conduct. An employer may rebut apparent liability for such acts by showing that it took timely and appropriate corrective action.