Georgia Supreme Court and Court of Appeals Building. (Photo: John Disney/ALM)

The majority of Georgia's courts do not have sexual harassment policies that define prohibited conduct, nor do they have a reporting and investigation process that judicial branch employees can turn to, according to a report released Friday by a Supreme Court of Georgia committee.

The committee found most courts across the state do not conduct regular sexual harassment training for judges and judicial branch employees, although some staff may receive training from the city or county where they are employed, according to the report. As a result, anti-harassment policies that may have been put in place by individual courts, the state's judicial councils or cities and counties "may not be enforceable against judges by the entities that promulgated the policies," the report concludes.

The report was presented to the Judicial Council of Georgia, the state judiciary's policymaking body, on Friday by Justice Sarah Hawkins Warren. Warren was appointed in February by Chief Justice Harold Melton to chair the Ad Hoc Committee to Prevent Sexual Harassment.

Melton created the committee in February to encourage courts across the state to establish sexual harassment policies and procedures for accepting and responding to complaints, as well as to provide training to prevent harassment, intimidation and reprisals.

The committee is comprised of eight judges representing each kind of court in Georgia. It reviewed and evaluated anti-harassment policies from state and federal courts, as well as policies that apply to Georgia's executive branch before issuing Friday's report.

The committee realized early on that sexual harassment policies put in place by cities or counties across the state "do not necessarily apply to judicial branch employees within the same class of court, let alone to employees throughout the judicial branch as a whole," according to the report. "That is because judicial employees in a given class of court may not be employed by the same entity, and some may not be covered by any policy at all. To make matters even more complex, the judges in a given class of court may be employed by a different entity than the employees."

"These differences work against the ability to impose a uniform policy for the entire judicial branch," the report said.

The Supreme Court of Georgia, the Court of Appeals, the Council of Superior Court Judges and the Administrative Office of the Courts currently have anti-harassment policies in place.

Currently, the primary recourse against a judge regarding sexual harassment allegations is the state Judicial Qualifications Commission, the report found. The 10-member JQC, which operates largely in secret, investigates alleged violations of the state Code of Judicial Conduct by judges but not their staff or other court officers. Complainants are barred from publicly discussing their cases on penalty of contempt of court. Investigations and other proceedings are handled in secret unless formal charges are brought against a judge or the JQC recommends that the state Supreme Court take disciplinary measures.

The report recommends that all courts implement or revise sexual harassment prevention policies based on a set of best practices included in the report that would apply to judges and all judicial branch employees. The report also urges individual courts to mandate that judges and judicial branch employees alike participate in sexual harassment prevention training and advocates the adoption of a uniform system for reporting and investigating sexual harassment claims. 

Read the report: