Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 850

524US2

Unit: U100

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Cite as: 524 U. S. 775 (1998)

805

Opinion of the Court

action with tangible consequences, like ﬁring and demotion.
See supra, at 790. And we have already noted some exam-
ples of liability provided by the Restatement itself, which
suggest that an afﬁrmative misuse of power might be re-
quired. See supra, at 802 (telegraph operator sends false
messages, a store manager cheats customers, editor pub-
lishes libelous editorial).

But neat examples illustrating the line between the af-
ﬁrmative and merely implicit uses of power are not easy to
come by in considering management behavior. Supervisors
do not make speeches threatening sanctions whenever they
make requests in the legitimate exercise of managerial au-
thority, and yet every subordinate employee knows the sanc-
tions exist; this is the reason that courts have consistently
held that acts of supervisors have greater power to alter the
environment than acts of coemployees generally, see supra,
at 802–803. How far from the course of ostensible supervi-
sory behavior would a company ofﬁcer have to step before
his orders would not reasonably be seen as actively using
authority?
Judgment calls would often be close, the results
would often seem disparate even if not demonstrably contra-
dictory, and the temptation to litigate would be hard to
resist. We think plaintiffs and defendants alike would be
poorly served by an active-use rule.

The other basic alternative to automatic liability would
avoid this particular temptation to litigate, but allow an em-
ployer to show as an afﬁrmative defense to liability that the
employer had exercised reasonable care to avoid harassment
and to eliminate it when it might occur, and that the com-
plaining employee had failed to act with like reasonable care
to take advantage of the employer’s safeguards and other-
wise to prevent harm that could have been avoided. This
composite defense would, we think, implement the statute
sensibly, for reasons that are not hard to fathom.

Although Title VII seeks “to make persons whole for in-
juries suffered on account of unlawful employment discrim-