At 9:59 PM 9/23/96, Lucky Green wrote:

As long as the person that you are speaking to is employed in any way, workplace issues apply. Even if you talk to the person after work and away from their place of employment. The courts have ruled that the speech does not have to occur at the workplace to be prohibited. All that is required is that the person is affected at the workplace.

Yes, you can be sued for sexual harrasment for trying to pick up a stranger in a bar, should that stranger still feel bothered by your advances while at work the next day.

The courts have ruled,

I don't believe this is so. Oh, I believe anybody can sue for anything, but the courts don't have to allow the case to proceed. In this example, it wouldn't get far. While I have objections to the overbroad (no pun intended) way many "sexual harassment" cases have been handled, essentially all of the cases I have heard about have involved employees and/or management within a company. For example, women feeling put upon by "tool girl" calendars in some offices, or women being "looked at inappropriately" by fellow employees. (Plus the more-legitimate complaints, such as being groped in the hallways, being told to hit the sheets or hit the streets, etc.) I don't for a nanosecond believe your example would ever reach a court, civil or criminal. Whom, for example, would the offended party sue? The employer, who had absolutely no involvement, or the stranger in the bar? While there are _stalking_ laws, if the stranger's behavior got extreme enough, there are no laws about trying to get a date. Nor are there any grounds for a person claiming a casual question provoked a mental trauma, blah blah blah. If this topic comes up again in ten years, things may've changed, of course. I'm not hopeful about the direction things are going. --Tim May We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."