Our firm has a new client, John Smith. John is a gay male who was hired by ABC Design as a Junior Designer on January 2, 2012. Mr. Smith remained a Junior Designer until January 20, 2014, when he was promoted to a Senior Designer position. He was then fired by ABC Design on July 28, 2015. At that time, ABC had 45 employees. Mr. Smith had received satisfactory or above satisfactory performance reviews for each of the three years he received reviews in January of 2013, 2014, and 2015. Mr. Smith had not been "out" at work until sometime in March, 2015, after he had wed his long-time partner, James, and had for the first time put a picture of himself and James in his cubicle from their February, 2015 wedding. After this, some of Mr. Smith's co-workers made derogatory comments on three separate occasions, including (1) referring to him as a "fairy" and a "fag" in the breakroom on two separation occasions, and (2) when walking by Mr. Smith's cubicle as he was working there, a co-worker asked another co-worker loudly "wonder who the wife is in that marriage," referring to Mr. Smith's wedding picture. Additionally, sometime after hours on June 23, 2015, someone ripped up Mr. Smith's wedding picture and left it on his desk, which Mr. Smith discovered when he came to work on June 24th. Mr. Smith reported each of these incidents to his supervisor, Jeremy Davis, within hours of their occurrence, but found out later that his supervisor did not report any of them to ABC's Office Manager, Charity Jones, who serves as the human resources professional for the company.

On July 28th, Mr. Smith was called into his supervisor's office and told that his employment was being terminated effective immediately due to a recent decline in the quality of his work and for a missed project deadline from earlier in July. Upon hearing the news, Mr. Smith stated that he believed he had been harassed by co-workers because of his sexual orientation and argued that the firing was unfair because he had not been told any of his work was unsatisfactory, that all his performance reviews to date had been satisfactory or above satisfactory, and he had received the promotion to Sr. Designer in early 2014. Additionally, Mr. Smith argued that the project deadline at issue had actually been changed by the client due to additions the client wanted at the last minute. Mr. Davis (the supervisor), denied that the termination was due to Mr. Smith's sexual orientation and restated that it was due to his work "slipping" and the missed project deadline. Ms. Jones (the Office Manager) was not present for all of this conversation between Mr. Smith and Mr. Davis, but came in at the end of the conversation and stated that Mr. Smith's firing was due to "performance issues" when Mr. Smith argued his points to her. Mr. Smith is seeking our assistance in determining the strength of a potential lawsuit against ABC Design for claims of hostile work environment, employment discrimination, and wrongful discharge. Please research potential legal claims Mr. Smith might have in our jurisdiction and draft a memo to me outlining your research findings and your conclusions regarding the strength of his case if we were to pursue litigation on Mr. Smith's behalf.

Relating to your research of sexual orientation employment discrimination and harassment in your Ohio. Topics that can be discussed during the presentation include your approach to your legal research (as well as aspects that went well and those that were challenging), the legal rules you found applicable in your jurisdiction, applicable statutes/ordinance/cases, your conclusions regarding the client's case, and any other information you feel is relevant to how you reached your conclusions. an outline of what you plan to cover in the presentation. at least 2-3 references that you plan to reference in your presentation