Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
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FARAGHER v. BOCA RATON

Opinion of the Court

visory employee was not otherwise obvious, ibid., and al-
though we cautioned that “common-law principles may not
be transferable in all their particulars to Title VII,” we cited
the Restatement §§ 219–237 with general approval.

Ibid.

We then proceeded to reject two limitations on employer
liability, while establishing the rule that some limitation was
intended. We held that neither the existence of a company
grievance procedure nor the absence of actual notice of the
harassment on the part of upper management would be dis-
positive of such a claim; while either might be relevant to
the liability, neither would result automatically in employer
immunity.
Ibid. Conversely, we held that Title VII placed
some limit on employer responsibility for the creation of a
discriminatory environment by a supervisor, and we held
that Title VII does not make employers “always automati-
cally liable for sexual harassment by their supervisors,”
ibid., contrary to the view of the Court of Appeals, which
had held that “an employer is strictly liable for a hostile envi-
ronment created by a supervisor’s sexual advances, even
though the employer neither knew nor reasonably could have
known of the alleged misconduct,” id., at 69–70.

Meritor’s statement of the law is the foundation on which
we build today. Neither party before us has urged us to
depart from our customary adherence to stare decisis in stat-
utory interpretation, Patterson v. McLean Credit Union, 491
U. S. 164, 172–173 (1989) (stare decisis has “special force” in
statutory interpretation). And the force of precedent here
is enhanced by Congress’s amendment to the liability provi-
sions of Title VII since the Meritor decision, without provid-
ing any modiﬁcation of our holding. Civil Rights Act of
1991, § 102, 105 Stat. 1072, 42 U. S. C. § 1981a; see Keene
Corp. v. United States, 508 U. S. 200, 212 (1993) (applying
the “presumption that Congress was aware of [prior] judicial
interpretations and,
in effect, adopted them”). See also
infra, at 804, n. 4.