An arbitration award that reinstated a teacher accused of making repeated sexually explicit comments toward his female co-worker violated the public policy against sexual harassment and cannot be enforced, the Commonwealth Court has ruled.

A split en banc panel found Sept. 18 in Neshaminy School District v. Neshaminy Federation of Teachers that imposing on Jared Katz a 20-day suspension but not dismissing him from his job as a ninth-grade teacher posed an unacceptable risk in the classroom and demonstrated a tolerance for sexual harassment.

“There is not a 'reasonable, calibrated, defensible relationship between' Katz's continuous, hostile, offensive and deleterious conduct 'violating dominant public policy and the arbitrator's response' to reinstate Katz to the classroom, even with the condition that the district could require him to attend reasonable sexual harassment training after his reinstatement,” Judge Renee Cohn Jubelirer wrote for the 5-2 majority.

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