Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 839.0

524US2

Unit: U100

[09-15-00 14:43:08] PAGES PGT: OPIN

794

FARAGHER v. BOCA RATON

Opinion of the Court

ment in creating hostile environment); Nichols v. Frank, 42
F. 3d 503, 508 (CA9 1994) (“The proper analysis for employer
liability in hostile environment cases is . . . not whether an
employee was acting within his ‘scope of employment’ ”);
Bouton v. BMW of North Am., Inc., 29 F. 3d 103, 107 (CA3
1994) (sexual harassment is outside scope of employment);
see also Ellerth v. Burlington Industries, Inc., decided with
Jansen v. Packaging Corp. of America, 123 F. 3d 490, 561
(CA7 1997) (en banc) (Manion, J., concurring and dissenting)
(supervisor’s harassment would fall within scope of employ-
ment only in “the rare case indeed”), aff ’d, ante, p. 742;
Lindemann & Grossman 812 (“Hostile environment sexual
harassment normally does not trigger respondeat superior
liability because sexual harassment rarely, if ever, is among
the ofﬁcial duties of a supervisor”). But cf. Martin v. Cava-
lier Hotel Corp., 48 F. 3d 1343, 1351–1352 (CA4 1995) (hold-
ing employer vicariously liable in part based on ﬁnding that
the supervisor’s rape of employee was within the scope of
employment); Kauffman v. Allied Signal, Inc., 970 F. 2d
178, 184 (CA6) (holding that a supervisor’s harassment was
within the scope of his employment, but nevertheless requir-
ing the victim to show that the employer failed to respond
adequately when it learned of the harassment), cert. denied,
506 U. S. 1041 (1992).
In so doing, the courts have empha-
sized that harassment consisting of unwelcome remarks and
touching is motivated solely by individual desires and serves
no purpose of the employer. For this reason, courts have
likened hostile environment sexual harassment to the classic
“frolic and detour” for which an employer has no vicarious
liability.

These cases ostensibly stand in some tension with others
arising outside Title VII, where the scope of employment has
been deﬁned broadly enough to hold employers vicariously
liable for intentional torts that were in no sense inspired by
any purpose to serve the employer.
In Ira S. Bushey &
Sons, Inc. v. United States, 398 F. 2d 167 (1968), for example,