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BURLINGTON INDUSTRIES, INC. v. ELLERTH

Opinion of the Court

absent the agency relation. A tangible employment action
in most cases inﬂicts direct economic harm. As a general
proposition, only a supervisor, or other person acting with
the authority of the company, can cause this sort of injury.
A co-worker can break a co-worker’s arm as easily as a
supervisor, and anyone who has regular contact with an
employee can inﬂict psychological
injuries by his or her
offensive conduct. See Gary, supra, at 1397; Henson, 682
F. 2d, at 910; Barnes v. Costle, 561 F. 2d 983, 996 (CADC
1977) (MacKinnon, J., concurring). But one co-worker (ab-
sent some elaborate scheme) cannot dock another’s pay, nor
can one co-worker demote another. Tangible 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 control.

Tangible employment actions are the means by which the
supervisor brings the ofﬁcial power of the enterprise to bear
on subordinates. A tangible employment decision requires
an ofﬁcial act of the enterprise, a company act. The decision
in most cases is documented in ofﬁcial company records, and
may be subject to review by higher level supervisors. E. g.,
Shager v. Upjohn Co., 913 F. 2d 398, 405 (CA7 1990) (noting
that the supervisor did not ﬁre plaintiff; rather, the Career
Path Committee did, but the employer was still liable be-
cause the committee functioned as the supervisor’s “cat’s-
paw”). The supervisor often must obtain the imprimatur of
the enterprise and use its internal processes. See Kotcher
v. Rosa & Sullivan Appliance Center, Inc., 957 F. 2d 59,
62 (CA2 1992) (“From the perspective of the employee, the
supervisor and the employer merge into a single entity”).

For these reasons, a tangible employment action taken by
the supervisor becomes for Title VII purposes the act of the
employer. Whatever the exact contours of the aided in the
agency relation standard, its requirements will always be
met when a supervisor takes a tangible employment action