Thinking about the Fox News case in the news and Bill O’Reilly being sued from all angles by women that worked with him for sexual harassment. One accusation is that he acted as mentor on the front end but sexual favors were expected at some point.
Let’s say we had the reverse and you had a very devout anchorman who only actively mentored his male assistants and co-workers one on one and has helped several launch successful careers in broadcasting. He is professional and polite with his female assistants and co-workers but does not reach out to them or offer advice and avoids any private one on one scenarios if possible.
It’s not in his job description or contract to mentor anyone, he does it because he wants to. Women are being discriminated against in his offering of advice but he has no responsibility to be a mentor, his contract is as talent only.
Employees can associate with whomever they wish. He wasn’t tasked to mentor anyone.
It would be difficult to prove that he was discriminating against women. He could say the women didn’t need mentoring or didn’t ask for mentoring or that the men clearly needed more help than the women did. It’s just a coincidence the mentor might say. Now prove to a jury in court that he is lying. You can sue anybody for anything… but it doesn’t mean you will win.
He’s also not an employer. Huge difference. He’s just an employee of the host broadcasting company. So the suit is going to be against the broadcasting company. “I was discriminated against by <XXX news> because I did not receive the mentoring that all the male anchors received”.
And that argument has a couple holes in it. One, the mentoring may not really be considered part of the job. Though I could see cases where it is being openly discussed as a perk in writing prior to employment - join our team and get mentored by the best! - where there might be a case here.
And second, the studio could protect itself by just making sure every junior anchor has a mentor. If a specific male anchor selects only other men, to avoid being tempted and/or to avoid any possibility of an accusation, that’s fine. It might be suboptimal to be the young female anchor who doesn’t have someone as famous mentoring them, but perfect fairness is not feasible.
Are we absolutely sure that this hypothetical anchorman doesn’t have employment/promotion influence? That is, if he’s the senior anchorman, does the station management rely upon him to advise them on who to hire, who to promote, who to assign the good stories to, etc.? If he has any substantial influence on career advancement or employment decisions at the station, then a court may well consider him “management” for the purposes of a EEO lawsuit. “This man helps decide who advances, and this man shows a pattern of favoritism based solely upon gender, as illustrated by X, Y, Z, A, B, C, D, E, F …” would be a tough argument to defeat.
One of the lawyers around here will probably weigh in with more complete advice, but the emerging trend is to consider anybody who recommends employment actions, including promotions and work assignments, to be a supervisor, even if they are not the person who makes the final decision. (cite) Title VII of the Civil Rights Act does not impose personal liability upon supervisors, but it’s possible for a discrimination lawsuit to include a tort component (intentional or negligent infliction of emotional distress, for example) that does impose personal liability. [As these torts are mostly matters of state law, the chances of successful suit vary from one locale to another.]
Per the OP setup he has (based on his mentoring record) had a large degree of success in helping younger (male) anchors and related male news persons launch their careers out of the station to larger things. In this case he’s s helping them be successful but not necessarily at the station where they work. But it’s undeniable he is advancing their careers with his guidance and connections, assistance which he is denying to female newspersons.