Press Room

Chicago’s new Sexual Harassment Ordinance becomes effective on July 1, 2022. Covered employees include any individual who is engaged to work within the geographic boundaries of the City of Chicago for or under the direction of another for monetary or other valuable consideration. Covered employers under the new requirements include businesses:

• employing individuals within the geographic boundary of the City and licensed under the City of Chicago Municipal Code, or
• maintaining a business location within the geographic boundaries of the City.

“Sexual Harassment” will now be defined as:

(i)            Any unwelcome sexual advances or unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature, or

(ii)           Requests for sexual favors or any conduct of a sexual nature when:

• submission to such conduct is made, either explicitly or implicitly, a term or condition of an individual’s employment,
• submission to or rejection of such conduct by an individual is used as the basis for employment decisions affecting such individual, or
• such conduct has the purpose or effect of substantially interfering with an individual’s work performance or creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive working environment.

(iii)          Sexual misconduct, which means behavior of a sexual nature which also involves coercion, abuse of authority, or misuse of an individual’s employment position.

The ordinance establishes more extensive requirements than those mandated by the State of Illinois and will require covered employers to establish a written policy that expressly prohibits sexual harassment in the workplace. Written policies should state, at a minimum:

• The definition of sexual harassment in Section 2-160-020 of the Municipal Code.
• A statement that sexual harassment is illegal in Chicago.
• Establish employee requirements to participate in:
  • Annual sexual harassment prevention training that equals or exceeds the model set by the State of Illinois (Illinois training resources can be found here) and (Online Training Modules can be found here).
    • Employees must have one hour of annual training.
    • Managers and supervisors must have two hours of annual training.
  • One hour of bystander training.
• Provide examples of prohibited conduct such as making submission to sexual conduct a condition of employment or making unwelcome sexual comments, gestures, e-mails, or texts.
• Provide details on:
  • Company policies on reporting allegations of sexual harassment.
  • Legal services for victims, examples include:
    • Legal Aid
    • National Women’s Law Center
    • Chicago Commission on Human Relations
  • A statement that retaliation for reporting sexual harassment is illegal.

Written policies must be provided in employee’s primary language during their first week of employment and employees must display posters, at least one in both English and Spanish, designed by the Commission in common gathering areas. Model policies, posters, and additional training resources can be found on the Commission’s webpage.

If you would like to discuss or have more information on the content of this post, please reach out to Audra Karalius at [email protected].