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No Harassment Found in Silk-Pajama Seduction Suit

Teyonda Wertz

Suggesting a double standard is alive and well in female-to-male sexual harassment cases, a Chicago jury has ruled that a top state administrator did not have a male employee fired for refusing to have sex with her.

Carlos Estes, 37, was terminated less than a month after spending a night with his boss in a Springfield, Ill., hotel while on business for the Illinois Department of Human Services. He alleged chief of staff Teyonda Wertz, 59, ordered him to share a two-room suite with her and, while wearing silk pajamas, tried to seduce him.

“You'll make love to me or you'll lose your job,” he quoted her as saying.

Wertz admitted wearing the pajamas, but insisted she kept her bedroom door shut and never propositioned Estes, who was working as her “special assistant.” And the jury found the state was not liable for sexual harassment or retaliation, apparently believing its explanation that Estes was fired for improper personal use of state-owned vehicles.

“On balance, we didn't think that whatever happened in that hotel room caused him to lose his job,” juror Charles Kitchen told the Chicago Sun-Times.

But Estes' attorney Dana L. Kurtz said a female plaintiff would have prevailed if the roles had been reversed. “Had a male supervisor arranged to share a hotel room with a female subordinate, there'd be no question," she said. “Any employer would've settled that case long ago.”

“There's still a stigma for men who are sexually harassed by their female bosses," Kurtz added.

Defense attorney William C. Anderson III had played on the stereotype that men simply don't decline offers of sex. “No touches, no kisses, no caresses. We're all grown-ups here. Does that sound like a truthful and believable scene?” he asked in his closing argument.

Estes was hired in March 2003 to, among other things, drive Wertz to DHS functions. After they arrived in Springfield for a conference on May 6, 2003, he testified, she offered him the sofa bed in her suite because he did not have a personal credit card to book a room for himself.

According to Estes, his boss had previously referred to him as a “boy toy” and “arm piece.” When they went up to the suite, she allegedly changed into the pajamas, climbed into her bed and told Estes, who was sitting on the sofa, to get undressed.

He refused her sexual advances, he said, but frightened of losing his job, changed into pajamas and lay on the bed, where they eventually fell asleep without touching.

Wertz's boss, Human Services Secretary Carol Adams, fired Estes on May 30, 2003. She testified that he had misused a state vehicle, parking it at O'Hare International Airport while on vacation.

But Kurtz noted that Estes was not given progressive discipline as were co-workers who violated the same policy. Wertz and Adams, moreover, were close friends and U.S. District Judge Ronald A. Guzman said in denying a defense motion for summary judgment that “the record supports the inference that the discharge decision was actually made by Wertz and rubber-stamped by Adams.”

By Matthew Heller
3/31/08