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Page Number: 21

18 

VANCE v. BALL STATE UNIV. 

Opinion of the Court 

simply  not  sufficient.  Employees  with  such  powers  are 
certainly  capable  of  creating  intolerable  work  environ­
ments, see post, at 9–11 (discussing examples), but so are 
many  other  co-workers.    Negligence  provides  the  better 
framework  for  evaluating  an  employer’s  liability  when  a 
harassing  employee  lacks  the  power  to  take  tangible  em­
ployment actions. 

C 
Although  our  holdings  in  Faragher  and  Ellerth  do  not 
resolve  the  question  now  before  us,  we  believe  that  the 
answer to that question is implicit in the characteristics of 
the framework that we adopted. 

To  begin,  there  is  no  hint  in  either Ellerth  or  Faragher
that  the  Court  contemplated  anything  other  than  a  uni­
tary category of supervisors, namely, those possessing the 
authority to effect a tangible change in a victim’s terms or
conditions of employment.  The Ellerth/Faragher framework 
draws  a  sharp  line  between  co-workers  and  supervisors.
Co-workers,  the  Court  noted,  “can  inflict  psychologi- 
cal  injuries”  by  creating  a  hostile  work  environment,  but
they  “cannot  dock  another’s  pay,  nor  can  one  co-worker 
demote  another.”  Ellerth,  524  U. S.,  at  762.    Only  a  su­
pervisor has the power to cause “direct economic harm” by 
“Tangible
taking  a  tangible  employment  action.    Ibid. 
employment actions fall within the special province of the 
supervisor.  The  supervisor  has  been  empowered  by  the 
company  as  a  distinct  class  of  agent  to  make  economic
decisions  affecting  other  employees  under  his  or  her  con­
trol. . . .  Tangible  employment  actions  are  the  means  by 
which  the  supervisor  brings  the  official  power  of  the  en­
terprise to bear on subordinates.”  Ibid. (emphasis added).
The strong implication of this passage is that the authori­
ty  to  take  tangible  employment  actions  is  the  defining
characteristic  of  a  supervisor,  not  simply  a  characteristic
of a subset of an ill-defined class of employees who qualify