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Clinton's lawyers in turn scoured Jones' sexual past, but whatever they came up with probably won't be presented in court--thanks in part to Clinton. In 1994, when he signed the Violence Against Women Act, he restricted the kinds of digging that defendants can do into the past of sexual-harassment plaintiffs--and specifically allowed such evidence against harassers who are accused of assault (the Jones team has argued in pleadings that Clinton's alleged behavior in the hotel room amounts to assault). "Now you have to be very careful about dredging up a woman's psychological or sexual history," says Judith Vladeck, a New York City lawyer who has handled sexual-harassment cases for 20 years. Technically, the new rules don't apply to the Jones case, as she filed suit before they took effect. But the rules have created a new climate in which such evidence appears unseemly. And anyway, for political reasons a Democratic President won't want to look too aggressive in trashing his accuser.
The Jones team's search has doubtless been frustrating even as it has embarrassed the White House: Lewinsky, the biggest catch, won't be part of the trial. Federal Judge Susan Webber Wright has ruled that no one can drag that scandal into her courtroom, in part to avoid interfering with special prosecutor Kenneth Starr's case. And anyway, no one claims that Clinton's alleged encounters with Lewinsky were unwelcome. Still, says Washington lawyer Douglas Huron, "if a man uses the power of his position to pursue a woman, then that could be deemed relevant." In spite of Wright's ruling, it's easy to imagine that "consent" is meaningless when offered by a starstruck intern. If Clinton were president of a FORTUNE 500 company instead of the country, he'd probably be toast. "If a CEO had sex with a 21-year-old girl in his office," says Monica Ballard, a consultant who advises businesses on sexual harassment, "I would tell the company, 'Fire him for poor judgment.'"
Employers pay people like Ballard hundreds of dollars a day for their advice. Headlines on sexual harassment scare the money out of them. Just last month the EEOC obtained its largest sexual-harassment settlement ever when drugmaker Astra U.S.A. agreed to pay nearly $10 million to scores of employees who claimed they had been fondled, asked for sex or exposed to a hostile environment by the former company president and others. Other firms have lost even more in jury verdicts favoring plaintiffs.
Companies have responded to the legal morass with wildly varying policies. Some ignore the issue, and others, particularly those burned with lawsuits, even ban interoffice dating. Nearly 9 out of 10 companies have procedures for dealing with sexual harassment, according to a recent survey, but many of those procedures are weak--"a paragraph in the company handbook," says Ellen Bravo, co-director of the National Association of Working Women.