LEWISTON, Maine — A sign posted by a landlord publicly insinuating a tenant was a prostitute was illegal, the Maine Human Rights Commission decided unanimously on Monday.

The landlord posted the sign after tenant Amanda Turcotte posted several signs asking her landlord not to enter her Lewiston apartment after she and her landlord, Roland Bisson, butted heads over the apartment, according to the Maine Human Rights Commission’s investigator’s report.

Turcotte had complained about water pressure, water temperature and a ratlike smell in the apartment, the report stated, and she posted signs that told Bisson to stay out of her apartment unless he had given her 24-hour notice.

Bisson made his own sign and hung it above Turcotte’s door. It read: “Attentional all Johns Property under surveillance NO PROSTITUTION.”

“The purpose for the sign was to stop all the traffic coming onto the property and parking in front of the barn, which is not permitted. Turcotte has had a large amount of male visitors and traffic in and out of her apartment since she moved in,” Bisson wrote to the Human Rights Commission.

Turcotte rebutted by saying “she is not a prostitute. She does not have a boyfriend. Her son’s father, to whom she is still married, stops by often to see their son” as do many of her friends and family members.

The vote was 4-0 that there were reasonable grounds that Turcotte was subjected to sexual harassment in housing.