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Page Number: 2

2 

VANCE v. BALL STATE UNIV. 

Syllabus 

eral usage and in other legal contexts because the term has varying 
meanings both in colloquial usage and in the law.  In any event, Con-
gress  did  not  use  the  term  “supervisor”  in  Title  VII,  and  the  way  to
understand  the  term’s  meaning  for  present  purposes  is  to  consider
the  interpretation  that  best  fits  within  the  highly  structured  frame-
work adopted in Faragher and Ellerth.  Pp. 10–14.

(b) Petitioner misreads Faragher and Ellerth in claiming that those
cases support an expansive definition of “supervisor” because, in her 
view, at least some of the alleged harassers in those cases, whom the 
Court  treated  as  supervisors,  lacked  the  authority  that  the  Seventh 
Circuit’s definition demands.  In Ellerth, there was no question that 
the  alleged  harasser,  who  hired  and  promoted  his  victim,  was  a  su-
pervisor.  And in Faragher, the parties never disputed the characteri-
zation of the alleged harassers as supervisors, so the question simply
was not before the Court.  Pp. 14–18.

(c) The answer to the question presented in this case is implicit in
the  characteristics  of  the  framework  that  the  Court  adopted  in 
Ellerth and Faragher, which draws a sharp line between co-workers 
and  supervisors  and  implies  that  the  authority  to  take  tangible  em-
ployment  actions  is  the  defining  characteristic  of  a  supervisor. 
Ellerth, supra, at 762. 

The  interpretation  of  the  concept  of  a  supervisor  adopted  today  is
one that can be readily applied.  An alleged harasser’s supervisor sta-
tus will often be capable of being discerned before (or soon after) liti-
gation commences and is likely to be resolved as a matter of law be-
fore trial.  By contrast, the vagueness of the EEOC’s standard would 
impede the resolution of the issue before trial, possibly requiring the 
jury to be instructed on two very different paths of analysis, depend-
ing  on  whether  it  finds  the  alleged  harasser  to  be  a  supervisor  or
merely a co-worker.

This  approach  will  not  leave  employees  unprotected  against  har-
assment  by  co-workers  who  possess  some  authority  to  assign  daily
tasks.  In such cases, a victim can prevail simply by showing that the
employer  was  negligent  in  permitting  the  harassment  to  occur,  and 
the jury should be instructed that the nature and degree of authority
wielded by the harasser is an important factor in determining negli-
gence.  Pp. 18–25.

(d) The  definition  adopted  today  accounts  for  the  fact  that  many 
modern  organizations  have  abandoned  a  hierarchical  management 
structure in favor of giving employees overlapping authority with re-
spect  to  work  assignments.    Petitioner  fears  that  employers  will  at-
tempt to insulate themselves from liability for workplace harassment 
by  empowering  only  a  handful  of  individuals  to  take  tangible  em-
ployment actions, but a broad definition of “supervisor” is not neces-