Published By: Jackson Lewis P.C. Disability, Leave & Health Management Blog Offering Practical Guidance to Employers Oregon Modernizes Anti-Stalking Laws, Expands Employee Leave Rights
On April 4, 2024, Governor Tina Kotek signed HB 4156 to modernize and expand protections under Oregon’s anti-stalking laws. The new law criminalizes newer forms of threatening and predatory conduct which have emerged with the technological advances of recent decades. The new law also impacts Oregon employers by expanding employees’ access to paid and unpaid safe leave benefits. It has long been a crime in Oregon to cause someone reasonable apprehension about their personal safety by knowingly alarming or coercing that person through repeated and unwanted contact. The term “repeated and unwanted contact” was generally defined to include only instances of direct physical presence (e.g., following a victim or lying in wait outside their homes and schools), or unwanted communications. That definition reflected traditional concepts of stalking behavior but failed to address newer forms of bad conduct, including, for example, forms of online harassment and the th...