Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 820.0

524US2

Unit: U100

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Syllabus

FARAGHER v. CITY OF BOCA RATON

certiorari to the united states court of appeals for
the eleventh circuit

No. 97–282. Argued March 25, 1998—Decided June 26, 1998

After resigning as a lifeguard with respondent City of Boca Raton (City),
petitioner Beth Ann Faragher brought an action against the City and
her immediate supervisors, Bill Terry and David Silverman, for nominal
damages and other relief, alleging, among other things, that the supervi-
sors had created a “sexually hostile atmosphere” at work by repeatedly
subjecting Faragher and other female lifeguards to “uninvited and offen-
sive touching,” by making lewd remarks, and by speaking of women in
offensive terms, and that this conduct constituted discrimination in the
“terms, conditions, and privileges” of her employment in violation of
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U. S. C. § 2000e–2(a)(1).
Following a bench trial, the District Court concluded that the supervi-
sors’ conduct was discriminatory harassment sufﬁciently serious to alter
the conditions of Faragher’s employment and constitute an abusive
working environment. The District Court then held that the City could
be held liable for the harassment of its supervisory employees because
the harassment was pervasive enough to support an inference that the
City had “knowledge, or constructive knowledge,” of it; under tradi-
tional agency principles Terry and Silverman were acting as the City’s
agents when they committed the harassing acts; and a third supervisor
had knowledge of the harassment and failed to report it to City ofﬁcials.
The Eleventh Circuit, sitting en banc, reversed. Relying on Meritor
Savings Bank, FSB v. Vinson, 477 U. S. 57, and on the Restatement
(Second) of Agency § 219 (1957) (Restatement), the Court of Appeals
held that Terry and Silverman were not acting within the scope of their
employment when they engaged in the harassing conduct, that their
agency relationship with the City did not facilitate the harassment, that
constructive knowledge of it could not be imputed to the City because
of its pervasiveness or the supervisor’s knowledge, and that the City
could not be held liable for negligence in failing to prevent it.

Held: An employer is vicariously liable for actionable discrimination
caused by a supervisor, but subject to an afﬁrmative defense looking to
the reasonableness of the employer’s conduct as well as that of the plain-
tiff victim. Pp. 786–810.

(a) While the Court has delineated the substantive contours of the
hostile environment Title VII forbids, see, e. g., Harris v. Forklift Sys-