Workplace harassment - State, region?

Factual Questions
1

As a consequence of having to recently attend a seminar on workplace harassment, I have become familiar with the text of the civil rights law that names color, race, religion, sex and national origin as protected classes, against which workplace harassment can become an issue.

Does “national origin” necessarily mean based on a country of origin, or can it refer to a state or region of the US? Like, for example, if a Northerner working for a company in the Southeast finds people frequently refer to “Yankees” in a derogatory manner. Or if someone from the Midwest is subject to “hick” jokes and comments (8 AM meeting tomorrow, Bob - remember to set your rooster a little earlier!)?

2

I have worked with these topics quite a bit in an HR capacity, and have never seen any legal protection for place of origin within the US, like you describe. As you probably heard in your training, national origin does not have to apply to you personally, but could apply to your ancestors. So if your comments related to “people from Chinatown” or “people from Little Italy” they would be covered, even if the subject were born in the US. The type of comments you are describing, to my knowledge, might be prohibited by company policy, but are unlikely to constitute illegal harassment based on national origin.