Playing music that is sexually graphic, violent, or degrading in the workplace is a form of sex discrimination, a Nevada court has ruled.

Last week, a federal appeals court ruled in favor of former employees of apparel manufacturer S&S Activewear, who brought a lawsuit against management for repeatedly playing music with "sexually graphic" and "violently misogynistic" lyrics.

The employees — seven women and one man — said that the music helped to cultivate a hostile and abusive work environment, where male employees “pantomimed sexually graphic gestures, yelled obscenities, made sexually explicit remarks, and openly shared pornographic videos.”

The eight employees behind the lawsuit said that the music "denigrated women," citing one example of the Eminem song, "Stan," about a pregnant woman forced into a trunk and "driven into water to be drowned."

The music was played regularly from commercial speakers in the 700,000-square-foot warehouse. Despite daily complaints, management reportedly said the songs were "motivational."

The employees said that the music constitutes sexual harassment under Title VII, which prohibits discrimination in employment based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin.

Because a man was featured among the plaintiffs, the defendants argued that the music was "offensive," but not offensive to specifically women. A lower court initially rejected the suit, ruling that there was no cause to believe “that any employee or group of employees were targeted, or that one individual or group was subjected to treatment that another group was not.”

After appealing, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals allowed the suit to go forward, with Judge Mary Margaret McKeown writing in a court opinion "the challenged conduct’s offensiveness to multiple genders is not a certain bar to stating a Title VII claim."

"Harassment, whether aural or visual, need not be directly targeted at a particular plaintiff in order to pollute a workplace and give rise to a Title VII claim," she said. “More than offhand foul comments, the music at S&S allegedly infused the workplace with sexually demeaning and violent language, which may support a Title VII claim even if it offended men as well as women.”

Mark Mausert, an attorney representing the eight employees, praised the decision, noting that it would prevent survivors of sexual assault from being re-traumatized in their workplace.

"Nobody thinks about how it affects the people who don't want to listen to that music," he told NBC. "You want to have a healthy, interdependent work environment where people take care of each other and respect each other."