During last year’s legislative session, the ACLU was highly supportive of Representative Teresa Tanzi’s special legislative commission to study sexual harassment in the workplace and the package of legislation that arose from it. We support the reintroduction of the legislation, which was never brought to the House floor for a vote. 

Among other things, the bills amend the definition of “employee” to include volunteers and unpaid interns (H 5346, introduced by Representative Tanzi), expand the statute of limitations for employees who have been victims of workplace misconduct (H 5341, introduced by Representative Evan Shanley), and explicitly provide the Human Rights Commission the jurisdiction to investigate sexual harassment complaints which originate from within the State House (H 5439, introduced by  Representative Camille Vella-Wilkinson, and S 460, introduced by Senator Gayle Goldin). We testified in favor of the entire package of legislation. The other bills in this package are H 5340, H 5342, H 5343, H 5345, and its Senate companion bill S 598, and H 5361. We additionally supported S 330, introduced by Senator Sandra Cano, which would have expanded worker protections and would have required workplace sexual harassment trainings. 

H 5340 and H 5341 passed out of the House but died in the Senate. S 330 passed the Senate but died in the House. Unfortunately, the other pieces of legislation died in committee. 

Session

2019

Position

Support