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Workplace Harassment: Once Is Enough. What Changed with Constitutional Court Judgment — by Andrés Cervantes
On February 19, 2026, the Constitutional Court of Ecuador issued Judgment No. 99-22-IN/26, declaring the phrase “exercised repeatedly” contained in the definition of workplace violence and harassment under Article 46.1 of the Labor Code and the article without a number following Article 24 of the Organic Law on Public Service (LOSEP) additively unconstitutional. As of its publication, the requirement that harassment be repeated in order to qualify as such has been eliminated: a single serious act is sufficient. This judgment establishes specific obligations that every employer—public and private—must be aware of and implement immediately.
What was the problem with the previous rule?
Since 2017, the legal definition of workplace harassment required the conduct to be “exercised repeatedly.” This meant that a single act, no matter how serious, could fall outside the statutory definition and, consequently, go unpunished. The Constitutional Court determined that this requirement created a protection deficit incompatible with Articles 11.7, 33, and 331 of the Constitution, which guarantee workers’ dignity, healthy working conditions, and the express prohibition of all forms of workplace harassment or violence.
What does the judgment establish?
The Court did not remove the phrase “exercised repeatedly” from the legal framework. Instead, it adopted an additive unconstitutionality decision, supplementing the provision by adding the circumstance of a single act. Going forward, the second paragraph of Article 46.1 of the Labor Code will provide that workplace violence and harassment includes conduct that violates a person’s dignity, whether committed once or repeatedly, and that may potentially cause harm, occurring in the workplace or at any time. The same integration applies to the article without a number following Article 24 of the LOSEP.
The international legal basis for the judgment is ILO Convention No. 190, which defines violence and harassment as behaviors that may occur “whether as a single occurrence or repeatedly.”
What must employers do now?
With this judgment, the standard applicable to public- and private-sector employers has been significantly raised. It is no longer possible to dismiss a harassment complaint on the grounds that the incident occurred only once. The labor authority must assess each act based on its nature, severity, and potential to cause harm, regardless of whether it was repeated. Under this new framework, employers should take preventive action:
- Review and update internal workplace harassment prevention and disciplinary protocols, removing any reference that conditions the existence of harassment on repeated conduct and establishing clear criteria for assessing the severity of single acts.
- Train middle managers, executives, and human resources teams on the applicable legal standard, emphasizing that a single particularly serious act may constitute workplace harassment and give rise to various forms of liability.
- Immediately activate internal reporting channels upon the first complaint, properly document each case from the outset, and ensure that the internal investigation is impartial, prompt, and confidential.