Sexual Harassment Lawyer for Macomb County
You are an electrician at Sterling Heights Assembly, an engineer at the GM Tech Center, a nurse at Henry Ford Macomb, or the only woman in a twelve-person supplier shop on Van Dyke. The comments, the pictures, the hands, or the proposition from the person who signs your timecard did not stop when you asked.
Then you reported it, and the overtime dried up or the write-ups began. You have a case if the conduct meets the legal definition of sexual harassment or if the employer retaliated for the report, and if you have the messages and witnesses to show it. The case evaluation is free and takes 15 minutes; termination cases are on contingency. Watch the shortest clock: an EEOC charge within 300 days if your employer has 15 or more people, and, for federal civilian employees at the Detroit Arsenal, 45 days to contact an EEO counselor. Call (313) 701-2448.
How sexual harassment cases look in Macomb County
Macomb County builds things, and its harassment cases come out of plants, shops, hospitals, and defense programs where the workforce is still mostly male and the hierarchy is close.
Assembly plants and the Tech Center in Warren and Sterling Heights
Stellantis Warren Truck and Sterling Heights Assembly, Ford Sterling Axle, and the GM Global Technical Center employ tens of thousands of hourly and salaried workers. On the floor, the pattern is an apprentice or a newly transferred woman in the trades whose crew treats her presence as a running joke, escalating from comments to photos to touching, while the team leader joins in or looks away. On the salaried side at the Tech Center it is quieter: a program manager’s messages, a “mentor” who controls the next assignment. The evidence: the crew group chat, photos of what was left in the toolbox, the hotline call date, the steward’s notes, and the overtime records showing what changed after you complained.
The Detroit Arsenal and the defense contractors around it
U.S. Army TACOM at the Detroit Arsenal in Warren and General Dynamics Land Systems in Sterling Heights run program teams that are small, cleared, and hard to leave, so the harasser may hold your assignment and your reference. The two workforces also follow different legal processes, explained below. The evidence: emails and messages, the date you contacted the EEO office or HR, the program reassignment that followed, and the appraisal that changed tone.
Hospital units in Clinton Township and Mount Clemens
Henry Ford Macomb in Clinton Township and McLaren Macomb in Mount Clemens generate the hospital version: a physician or a patient, and a charge nurse who treats it as part of nursing. It is not. Once a hospital knows about harassment by anyone whose access it controls, including a patient or a contracted physician, it has to take reasonable steps to stop it. The evidence: the incident report, the email to the manager, the schedule that kept assigning you to that physician’s cases, and the coworkers who saw it.
Supplier shops on Van Dyke and Gratiot, and other small employers
The county’s supplier base includes hundreds of shops with fewer than 15 employees, where the owner is the harasser and there is no HR to report to. Title VII does not reach them. Michigan’s ELCRA does, and that distinction decides these cases. The evidence: the owner’s texts, your pay records showing the hours cut after you refused, and the coworker who was there.
The law that applies
Start with employer size, because in Macomb County it decides which statute you have.
Michigan’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act (MCL 37.2101) covers every employer with one or more employees. It prohibits quid pro quo harassment, where a job benefit or consequence is tied to sexual conduct, and hostile-environment harassment, where unwelcome sexual conduct or communication substantially interferes with your work or creates an intimidating or offensive environment. You have three years, you go straight to circuit court, and emotional-distress damages are uncapped. For a hostile environment, the employer is liable when higher management knew or should have known and did not take prompt, adequate action; for a supervisor’s or owner’s quid pro quo, it is liable directly. In a small shop the owner and the employer are the same person, which makes the ELCRA claim straightforward.
Title VII covers employers with 15 or more employees and requires an EEOC charge within 300 days of the last incident. Compensatory and punitive damages are capped at $50K–$300K by employer size. The Faragher/Ellerth defense applies when a supervisor harassed you but you were not fired, demoted, or docked: the employer avoids liability by showing it had a reasonable complaint procedure and you unreasonably failed to use it. Every Big Three plant and large contractor has such a procedure, which is why using it in writing matters.
Retaliation under MCL 37.2701 and Title VII is a separate claim, and in the trades it is often the better one. Overtime that disappears, a transfer to the worst shift, or a layoff that reaches only you, within weeks of your complaint, is a case whether or not the harassment itself was severe enough to be actionable.
| Claim | Who’s covered | Deadline | Damages |
|---|---|---|---|
| ELCRA harassment and retaliation | Every Michigan employer with 1+ employees, including small supplier shops | 3 years, direct to circuit court | Lost wages, uncapped emotional distress, attorney fees; the harasser can be named personally |
| Title VII harassment and retaliation | Private and municipal employers with 15+ employees | EEOC charge within 300 days, then suit | Lost wages, compensatory and punitive damages capped at $50K–$300K, fees |
| Federal-sector EEO (TACOM and other federal civilian employees) | Federal employees at the Detroit Arsenal | Contact an agency EEO counselor within 45 days | Title VII remedies, compensatory damages capped, no punitive damages against the government |
Whichever route you take, the shortest deadline that applies to you controls. The Michigan employment claim deadlines page lists all of them.
Where your Macomb County sexual harassment case gets filed
Michigan-law claims are filed in the Macomb County Circuit Court, the 16th Judicial Circuit, at 40 N. Main Street in Mount Clemens. Federal claims belong to the Eastern District of Michigan, which sits mainly at the Theodore Levin U.S. Courthouse, 231 W. Lafayette Boulevard, Detroit.
For a Macomb County harassment case, the state courthouse is usually the right one. An ELCRA-only complaint in Mount Clemens keeps emotional-distress damages uncapped, lets you name the harasser as a defendant, skips the EEOC, and is heard by a jury drawn from Warren, Sterling Heights, Clinton Township, and the rest of the county, many of whom have worked a line or a hospital floor. A Title VII count adds capped punitive damages and gives the employer the option to remove the case to Detroit. The Macomb County employment lawyer page has more on the 16th Circuit.
The address does not change with your city. A tradeswoman from Warren, a defense-program engineer from Sterling Heights, and a nurse from Clinton Township all file in the same Mount Clemens courthouse.
Detroit Arsenal employees and defense contractors follow different rules
Two Macomb County workforces sit side by side in Warren and Sterling Heights and face different procedures.
If you are a federal civilian employee at TACOM or elsewhere on the Detroit Arsenal, none of the deadlines above are yours. You must contact your agency’s EEO counselor within 45 days of the harassment or the retaliatory act. That starts informal counseling, then a formal complaint and an agency investigation, and only later a hearing or a lawsuit. Miss the 45 days and the claim is usually gone. Michigan’s ELCRA does not apply to the federal government.
If you work for General Dynamics Land Systems or another contractor in the defense supply chain, you are a private employee, and ELCRA and Title VII apply normally. The wrinkle is the security clearance. Courts will not second-guess the government’s clearance decision, so a case cannot rest on the theory that a clearance was wrongly pulled. It can rest on what the contractor did: the reassignment off the program, the write-ups, the shift change, the layoff selection. Those are ordinary retaliation facts, proved the ordinary way, with timing and documents.
Unionized trades at the plants have a third layer, the grievance, which belongs to the union, and the union also represents the harasser if he is in the unit. File the grievance and separately report to labor relations in writing; the grievance neither stops the statutory clocks nor replaces the claims.
What to do in the first 72 hours
- Back up the messages before your badge stops working. Group texts, photos, and hotline confirmations, saved to a personal phone or account with the dates showing.
- Report to labor relations or HR in writing. A dated email that describes the conduct and names the person gives the plant notice and takes away its “she never told us” defense.
- Write down every incident with a date. Include who was on the crew, who laughed, and who walked away, because in a trades case the witnesses decide it.
- Send a written personnel-file request. Under Michigan’s Bullard-Plawecki Employee Right to Know Act the employer must let you review it, and it shows whether the discipline predates your complaint.
- Do not sign a severance or a “last chance” agreement. Both can waive the claims, and neither has to be signed in the meeting.
- Do not quit yet, and do not confront the harasser by text. A resignation weakens the case, and an angry message becomes the employer’s exhibit.
Macomb County sexual harassment questions
I’m a civilian employee at the Detroit Arsenal in Warren. Do the Michigan deadlines on this page apply to me?
No. Federal civilian employees follow the federal-sector EEO process, and the first deadline is 45 days from the harassment or the retaliation to contact your agency’s EEO counselor. Michigan’s ELCRA does not apply to the federal government, and the 300-day EEOC rule for private employees does not either. If you work for a contractor on the Arsenal rather than the Army itself, you are a private employee and the Michigan and Title VII rules do apply.
My employer is a small supplier shop in Macomb County with fewer than 15 employees. Can I still bring a harassment claim?
Yes, under Michigan law. Title VII does not cover employers with fewer than 15 employees, but Michigan’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act covers every employer with one or more, and it allows the harasser to be sued personally. The claim goes to Macomb County Circuit Court within three years, no agency filing required, and emotional-distress damages are not capped. In a small shop where the owner is the harasser, the employer’s liability is direct.
I’m the only woman in my trade at a Sterling Heights plant and the comments never stop. Is that harassment if nobody touched me?
It can be. Hostile-environment harassment does not require touching. Sexual comments, jokes, images, and gender-based hostility that are severe or pervasive enough to interfere with your work meet the definition under both ELCRA and Title VII. A single crude remark usually does not; a daily pattern usually does. The proof is the pattern, so write incidents down with dates, keep the group-chat messages, and report in writing so the plant is on notice.
Does my employer have to fire the harasser?
No. The law requires action reasonably calculated to end the harassment, not any particular punishment. A transfer, a schedule change, a final warning, or restricting a contractor’s access can satisfy the duty if the conduct stops. What the employer cannot do is move you to the worse shift, cut your hours, or lay you off as the “solution.” If the harassment continues after the employer’s response, or the response landed on you, the employer has not met its duty.
What if the harassment happened two years ago but the retaliation happened last month?
Both may still be live. Retaliation is its own claim with its own clock, measured from the write-up, layoff, or firing, not from the original harassment. The harassment claim under ELCRA runs three years from the last act, and a hostile environment that continued into that window can bring in earlier conduct as part of the same pattern. The Title VII window is 300 days, so an older harassment claim may be federal-barred while the retaliation claim is fresh.
Talk to a sexual harassment lawyer who takes Macomb County cases
If it happened at a Macomb County plant, shop, hospital, or defense program, and speaking up cost you hours, a program, or a job, call (313) 701-2448 or schedule a free 15-minute case evaluation. I will tell you which statute covers you, which deadline is closest, and whether the evidence you have is enough.
Warren Astbury, Harvard Law School, J.D. 2009. Fifteen years on the employee side and more than 50 trials to verdict. For the written-report piece, read reporting sexual harassment in Michigan.
Neighboring counties have their own pages: Wayne County, Oakland County, and Washtenaw County.