New York's Unpaid Interns Can Now Sue for Sexual Harassment

Unpaid interns in New York who are sexually harassed now have the right to sue, a protection previously enjoyed only by the unpaid interns of Oregon and Washington, D.C.

Everyone else is out of luck. Employment protections enshrined in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, including the ban on sexual harassment, apply only to “employees,” and unpaid interns don’t count. “At least with respect to the federal law that we enforce, an unpaid intern would not be legally protected by our laws prohibiting sexual harassment,” a spokesperson for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission told ProPublica last year. (Workers classified as independent contractors, a category that can range from taxi drivers to fashion models, are excluded too.) The same goes for many state and city employment protections, including—until this year—New York City’s and New York State’s.