Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 822

524US2

Unit: U100

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

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

777

Syllabus

visors have special authority enhancing their capacity to harass and
the employer can guard against their misbehavior more easily. This
answer, however, implicates an entirely separate category of agency
law, considered in the next section. Given the virtue of categorical
clarity, it is better to reject reliance on misuse of supervisory author-
ity (without more) as irrelevant to the scope-of-employment analysis.
Pp. 793–801.

(c) The Court of Appeals erred in rejecting a theory of vicarious lia-
bility based on § 219(2)(d) of the Restatement, which provides that an
employer “is not subject to liability for the torts of his servants acting
outside the scope of their employment unless . . . the servant purported
to act or speak on behalf of the principal and there was reliance on
apparent authority, or he was aided in accomplishing the tort by the
existence of the agency relation.”
It makes sense to hold an employer
vicariously liable under Title VII for some tortious conduct of a supervi-
sor made possible by use of his supervisory authority, and the aided-by-
agency-relation principle of § 219(2)(d) provides an appropriate starting
point for determining liability for the kind of harassment presented
here.
In a sense a supervisor is always assisted in his misconduct by
the supervisory relationship; however, the imposition of liability based
on the misuse of supervisory authority must be squared with Meritor’s
holding that an employer is not “automatically” liable for harassment by
a supervisor who creates the requisite degree of discrimination. There
are two basic alternatives to counter the risk of automatic liability. The
ﬁrst is to require proof of some afﬁrmative invocation of that authority
by the harassing supervisor; the second is to recognize an afﬁrmative
defense to liability in some circumstances, even when a supervisor has
created the actionable environment. The problem with the ﬁrst alter-
native is that there is not a clear line between the afﬁrmative and
merely implicit uses of supervisory power; such a rule would often lead
to close judgment calls and results that appear disparate if not contra-
dictory, and the temptation to litigate would be hard to resist. The
second alternative would avoid this particular temptation to litigate and
implement Title VII sensibly by giving employers an incentive to pre-
vent and eliminate harassment and by requiring employees to take ad-
vantage of the preventive or remedial apparatus of their employers.
Thus, the Court adopts the following holding in this case and in Burling-
ton Industries, Inc. v. Ellerth, ante, p. 742, also decided today. An
employer is subject to vicarious liability to a victimized employee for an
actionable hostile environment created by a supervisor with immediate
(or successively higher) authority over the employee. When no tangi-
ble employment action is taken, a defending employer may raise an af-
ﬁrmative defense to liability or damages, subject to proof by a prepon-