Ashley Furniture Worker to Get Sexual Harassment Trial

A jury must decide whether an Ashley Furniture employee in Mississippi lost accounts and commissions and was fired because she spurned her store manager’s persistent sexual advances, a federal judge ruled.

Tina Ray may be able to alternatively show that Jeff Rogers’s alleged behavior made Ray’s work environment sexually hostile even if it rejects Ray’s quid pro quo harassment claims, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi said Jan. 4.

Ray says Rogers would dislodge her name-tag in order to touch her breasts. He also sometimes pressed his genitalia into her back while whispering “sexual things” and ...