New York court: Unpaid interns not protected by sexual harassment laws

A New York federal district court ruled last week that Lihuan Wang, an intern at a TV broadcaster named Phoenix Satellite Television U.S., could not bring a sexual harassment claim under New York human rights laws because she was not paid, and therefore not considered an employee.

Wang was a graduate student at Syracuse University in 2009 when she interned in the New York bureau of Phoenix Satellite Television, the American subsidiary of Hong Kong-based media conglomerate Phoenix Media Group.

In a lawsuit, she said the station’s Washington D.C. bureau chief Zhengzhu Liu sexually harassed her after luring her to his hotel room on the pretext that he wanted to talk about her job performance and the possibility of hiring her full time.