Biopic About First Woman to Win Workplace Harassment Suit in the Works
Sandra Bundy, the first woman to win a workplace sexual harassment lawsuit in the historic Bundy v. Jackson, is getting her own film. Deadline reports that Adaptive Studios and EnLight Productions are developing “Silence Breaker: The Sandra Bundy Story.” Bundy’s lawsuit against the D.C. Department of Corrections will serve as the focus of the film.
Bundy v. Jackson “set the precedent for all subsequent civil rights and equality cases dealing with sexual misconduct at work,” the source emphasizes.
EnLight’s Adriane Hopper Williams and Adaptive Studios’ Courtney Parker are among “Silence Breaker’s” exec producers, but no director or writer is attached yet.
In the 1970s Bundy was subjected to sexually explicit comments and propositions at her job at the Department of Corrections. When she reported the abuse to her supervisor, he responded, “Any man in his right mind would want to rape you.”
Her initial complaint did nothing but draw criticism about her job performance, so Bundy filed a lawsuit in 1977 on the grounds that her civil rights had been violated. She lost the case and was demoted at work. However, Bundy refused to give up. “I had to protect my family, and I had to protect my livelihood,” Bundy recently told Washingtonian. “So I had to fight.”
Bundy did just that and filed an appeal, which she won. According to Washingtonian, in 1981 the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit “reversed the lower court’s decision, saying that other courts had already determined that racial and ethnic discrimination was illegal under the Civil Rights Act because it ‘poison[ed] the atmosphere of employment.’ If the appeals court didn’t extend the statute’s protections to circumstances like Bundy’s, ‘an employer could sexually harass a female employee with impunity by carefully stopping short of firing the employee.’”
Five years later the Supreme Court upheld the Bundy v. Jackson arguments in Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson and “established once and for all that sexual harassment was an illegal form of sex discrimination.”
“Given the spotlight on the #MeToo movement and recent truths about present day sexual harassment in the workplace, it’s important that stories such as Sandra Bundy’s are told and shared with the world,” said Parker, Adaptive Studios’ VP Alternative Programming. “This case, which is so relevant given the current atmosphere, influences court decisions and proceedings still happening today.”
“Sandra Bundy’s story was introduced to us a year ago through her niece — we knew immediately it would be perfect for our Making History series — a brand that was created to uncover the untold stories of trailblazing women in America,” added Williams, EnLight’s production president. “This story could not have come to us at a more relevant time as issues of sexual harassment and inequality in the workplace are being addressed in a meaningful way.”
