Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 834.0

524US2

Unit: U100

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

789

Opinion of the Court

standards for determining an employer’s liability for them.
There have, for example, been myriad cases in which District
Courts and Courts of Appeals have held employers liable on
account of actual knowledge by the employer, or high-
echelon ofﬁcials of an employer organization, of sufﬁciently
harassing action by subordinates, which the employer or its
informed ofﬁcers have done nothing to stop. See, e. g., Katz
v. Dole, 709 F. 2d 251, 256 (CA4 1983) (upholding employer
liability because the “employer’s supervisory personnel man-
ifested unmistakable acquiescence in or approval of the har-
assment”); EEOC v. Hacienda Hotel, 881 F. 2d 1504, 1516
(CA9 1989) (employer liable where hotel manager did not re-
spond to complaints about supervisors’ harassment); Hall v.
Gus Constr. Co., 842 F. 2d 1010, 1016 (CA8 1988) (holding
employer liable for harassment by co-workers because super-
visor knew of the harassment but did nothing).
In such in-
stances, the combined knowledge and inaction may be seen
as demonstrable negligence, or as the employer’s adoption of
the offending conduct and its results, quite as if they had
been authorized afﬁrmatively as the employer’s policy. Cf.
Oncale, supra, at 77 (victim reported his grounds for fearing
rape to company’s safety supervisor, who turned him away
with no action on complaint).

Nor was it exceptional that standards for binding the
In that case
employer were not in issue in Harris, supra.
of discrimination by hostile environment, the individual
charged with creating the abusive atmosphere was the presi-
dent of the corporate employer, 510 U. S., at 19, who was
indisputably within that class of an employer organization’s
ofﬁcials who may be treated as the organization’s proxy.
Burns v. McGregor Electronic Industries, Inc., 955 F. 2d
559, 564 (CA8 1992) (employer-company liable where harass-
ment was perpetrated by its owner); see Torres v. Pisano,
116 F. 3d 625, 634–635, and n. 11 (CA2) (noting that a super-
visor may hold a sufﬁciently high position “in the manage-
ment hierarchy of the company for his actions to be imputed