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

797

Opinion of the Court

(1949) (“The liability of a master to a third person for the
torts of a servant has been widely extended by aid of the
elastic phrase ‘scope of the employment’ which may be used
to include all which the court wishes to put into it”). Older
cases, for example, treated smoking by an employee during
working hours as an act outside the scope of employment,
but more recently courts have generally held smoking on the
job to fall within the scope. Prosser & Keeton, supra, at
It is not that employers formerly did not
504, and n. 23.
authorize smoking but have now begun to do so, or that em-
ployees previously smoked for their own purposes but now
do so to serve the employer. We simply understand smok-
ing differently now and have revised the old judgments
about what ought to be done about it.

The proper analysis here, then, calls not for a mechanical
application of indeﬁnite and malleable factors set forth in the
Restatement, see, e. g., §§ 219, 228, 229, but rather an enquiry
into the reasons that would support a conclusion that harass-
ing behavior ought to be held within the scope of a supervi-
sor’s employment, and the reasons for the opposite view.
The Restatement itself points to such an approach, as in the
commentary that the “ultimate question” in determining the
scope of employment is “whether or not it is just that the
loss resulting from the servant’s acts should be considered
as one of the normal risks to be borne by the business in
which the servant is employed.”
Id., § 229, Comment a.
See generally Taber v. Maine, 67 F. 3d 1029, 1037 (CA2 1995)
(“As the leading Torts treatise has put it, ‘the integrating
principle’ of respondeat superior is ‘that the employer should
be liable for those faults that may be fairly regarded as risks
of his business, whether they are committed in furthering it
or not’ ” (quoting 5 F. Harper, F. James, & O. Gray, Law of
Torts § 26.8, pp. 40–41 (2d ed. 1986))).

In the case before us, a justiﬁcation for holding the offen-
sive behavior within the scope of Terry’s and Silverman’s
employment was well put in Judge Barkett’s dissent: “[A]