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Cite as: 524 U. S. 742 (1998)

763

Opinion of the Court

against a subordinate.
In that instance, it would be implau-
sible to interpret agency principles to allow an employer to
escape liability, as Meritor itself appeared to acknowledge.
See supra, at 760–761.

Whether the agency relation aids in commission of super-
visor harassment which does not culminate in a tangible em-
ployment action is less obvious. Application of the standard
is made difﬁcult by its malleable terminology, which can be
read to either expand or limit liability in the context of
supervisor harassment. On the one hand, a supervisor’s
power and authority invests his or her harassing conduct
with a particular threatening character, and in this sense,
a supervisor always is aided by the agency relation. See
Meritor, 477 U. S., at 77 (Marshall, J., concurring in judg-
ment) (“[I]t is precisely because the supervisor is understood
to be clothed with the employer’s authority that he is able
to impose unwelcome sexual conduct on subordinates”). On
the other hand, there are acts of harassment a supervisor
might commit which might be the same acts a coemployee
would commit, and there may be some circumstances where
the supervisor’s status makes little difference.

It is this tension which, we think, has caused so much con-
fusion among the Courts of Appeals which have sought to
apply the aided in the agency relation standard to Title VII
cases. The aided in the agency relation standard, however,
is a developing feature of agency law, and we hesitate to
render a deﬁnitive explanation of our understanding of the
standard in an area where other important considerations
must affect our judgment.
In particular, we are bound by
our holding in Meritor that agency principles constrain the
imposition of vicarious liability in cases of supervisory har-
assment. See id., at 72 (“Congress’ decision to deﬁne ‘em-
ployer’ to include any ‘agent’ of an employer, 42 U. S. C.
§ 2000e(b), surely evinces an intent to place some limits on
the acts of employees for which employers under Title VII
are to be held responsible”). Congress has not altered Mer-