Legal Definitions - harassment

In legal terms, harassment refers to unwelcome and offensive words, actions, or conduct directed at an individual that serves no legitimate purpose and causes distress, intimidation, or a hostile environment. While the core concept involves persistent or severe unwanted behavior, its specific legal definition and consequences can vary significantly depending on the context, such as criminal law, employment law, or civil disputes.

Generally, harassment is characterized by:

• It is unwanted, uninvited, and unwelcome by the recipient.
• It is often repeated or persistent, though a single severe incident can sometimes qualify.
• It causes a person to feel threatened, intimidated, demeaned, annoyed, alarmed, or experience substantial emotional distress.
• It lacks any legitimate justification or purpose.

Here are a few examples illustrating different forms of harassment:

• Workplace Harassment: A new employee, who uses a wheelchair, is regularly subjected to insensitive jokes and mocking imitations of their gait by a coworker during team meetings. Despite the employee asking the coworker to stop, the behavior continues, making the employee dread coming to work and feel isolated.

  How this illustrates harassment: This is unwelcome conduct based on a protected characteristic (disability). The repeated nature of the jokes and imitations creates a hostile work environment, affecting the terms and conditions of the employee's employment, which is a form of employment discrimination under laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

• Criminal Harassment (Stalking): After a brief dating relationship ended, one individual begins repeatedly sending hundreds of unwanted text messages and emails daily to their former partner, showing up unannounced at their gym, and even following them home from work. This behavior causes the former partner to live in constant fear for their safety and well-being.

  How this illustrates harassment: This involves intentional and repeated actions (following, unwanted communication) that cause the victim to reasonably fear for their physical safety and experience significant emotional distress. Such conduct can constitute a criminal offense, often categorized as stalking or harassment, depending on the jurisdiction.

• Civil Harassment (Neighbor Dispute): A resident in an apartment building consistently leaves threatening notes on their neighbor's door, bangs loudly on the shared wall at all hours of the night, and spreads false rumors about them to other tenants, all without any provocation. This persistent behavior makes the neighbor feel unsafe and unable to enjoy their home.

  How this illustrates harassment: This demonstrates repeated, unwelcome behavior that causes significant annoyance, alarm, and emotional distress to the neighbor, interfering with their peaceful enjoyment of their property. While not necessarily criminal in every instance, such conduct could lead to civil legal action, such as a restraining order, to prevent further harassment.