Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 836.0

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Unit: U100

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

791

Opinion of the Court

Grossman 776 (noting that courts hold employers “automati-
cally liable” in quid pro quo cases because the “supervisor’s
actions, in conferring or withholding employment beneﬁts,
are deemed as a matter of law to be those of the employer”).
Other courts have suggested that vicarious liability is proper
because the supervisor acts within the scope of his authority
when he makes discriminatory decisions in hiring, ﬁring, pro-
motion, and the like. See, e. g., Shager v. Upjohn Co., 913
F. 2d 398, 405 (CA7 1990) (“[A] supervisory employee who
ﬁres a subordinate is doing the kind of thing that he is au-
thorized to do, and the wrongful intent with which he does
it does not carry his behavior so far beyond the orbit of his
responsibilities as to excuse the employer” (citing Restate-
ment § 228)). Others have suggested that vicarious liability
is appropriate because the supervisor who discriminates in
this manner is aided by the agency relation. See, e. g., Nich-
ols v. Frank, 42 F. 3d 503, 514 (CA9 1994). Finally, still
other courts have endorsed both of the latter two theories.
See, e. g., Harrison, 112 F. 3d, at 1443; Henson, 682 F. 2d,
at 910.

The soundness of the results in these cases (and their con-
tinuing vitality), in light of basic agency principles, was con-
ﬁrmed by this Court’s only discussion to date of standards of
employer liability, in Meritor, supra, which involved a claim
of discrimination by a supervisor’s sexual harassment of a
subordinate over an extended period.
In afﬁrming the
Court of Appeals’s holding that a hostile atmosphere result-
ing from sex discrimination is actionable under Title VII, we
also anticipated proceedings on remand by holding agency
principles relevant in assigning employer liability and by re-
jecting three per se rules of liability or immunity.
477 U. S.,
at 70–72. We observed that the very deﬁnition of employer
in Title VII, as including an “agent,” id., at 72, expressed
Congress’s intent that courts look to traditional principles of
the law of agency in devising standards of employer liability
in those instances where liability for the actions of a super-