Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 843.0

524US2

Unit: U100

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798

FARAGHER v. BOCA RATON

Opinion of the Court

pervasively hostile work environment of sexual harassment
is never (one would hope) authorized, but the supervisor is
clearly charged with maintaining a productive, safe work en-
vironment. The supervisor directs and controls the conduct
of the employees, and the manner of doing so may inure to
the employer’s beneﬁt or detriment, including subjecting the
111 F. 3d, at 1542 (opinion
employer to Title VII liability.”
dissenting in part and concurring in part).
It is by now well
recognized that hostile environment sexual harassment by
supervisors (and, for that matter, coemployees) is a persist-
ent problem in the workplace. See Lindemann & Kadue 4–5
(discussing studies showing prevalence of sexual harass-
ment); Ellerth, 123 F. 3d, at 511 (Posner, C. J., concurring
and dissenting) (“[E]veryone knows by now that sexual har-
assment is a common problem in the American workplace”).
An employer can, in a general sense, reasonably anticipate
the possibility of such conduct occurring in its workplace,
and one might justify the assignment of the burden of the
untoward behavior to the employer as one of the costs of
doing business, to be charged to the enterprise rather than
the victim. As noted, supra, at 796–797, developments like
this occur from time to time in the law of agency.

Two things counsel us to draw the contrary conclusion.
First, there is no reason to suppose that Congress wished
courts to ignore the traditional distinction between acts fall-
ing within the scope and acts amounting to what the older
law called frolics or detours from the course of employment.
Such a distinction can readily be applied to the spectrum of
possible harassing conduct by supervisors, as the following
examples show. First, a supervisor might discriminate ra-
cially in job assignments in order to placate the prejudice
Instances of this variety of the
pervasive in the labor force.
heckler’s veto would be consciously intended to further the
employer’s interests by preserving peace in the workplace.
Next, supervisors might reprimand male employees for
workplace failings with banter, but respond to women’s