Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 849.0

524US2

Unit: U100

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804

FARAGHER v. BOCA RATON

Opinion of the Court

In sum, there are good reasons for vicarious liability for
misuse of supervisory authority. That rationale must, how-
ever, satisfy one more condition. We are not entitled to rec-
ognize this theory under Title VII unless we can square it
with Meritor’s holding that an employer is not “automati-
cally” liable for harassment by a supervisor who creates the
requisite degree of discrimination,4 and there is obviously
some tension between that holding and the position that a
supervisor’s misconduct aided by supervisory authority sub-
jects the employer to liability vicariously; if the “aid” may
be the unspoken suggestion of retaliation by misuse of super-
visory authority, the risk of automatic liability is high. To
counter it, we think there are two basic alternatives, one
being to require proof of some afﬁrmative invocation of
that authority by the harassing supervisor, the other to rec-
ognize an afﬁrmative defense to liability in some circum-
stances, even when a supervisor has created the actionable
environment.

There is certainly some authority for requiring active or
afﬁrmative, as distinct from passive or implicit, misuse of
supervisory authority before liability may be imputed.
That is the way some courts have viewed the familiar cases
holding the employer liable for discriminatory employment

4 We are bound to honor Meritor on this point not merely because of the
high value placed on stare decisis in statutory interpretation, supra, at
792, but for a further reason as well. With the amendments enacted by
the Civil Rights Act of 1991, Congress both expanded the monetary relief
available under Title VII to include compensatory and punitive damages,
see § 102, 105 Stat. 1072, 42 U. S. C. § 1981a, and modiﬁed the statutory
grounds of several of our decisions, see § 101 et seq. The decision of Con-
gress to leave Meritor intact is conspicuous. We thus have to assume
that in expanding employers’ potential liability under Title VII, Congress
relied on our statements in Meritor about the limits of employer liability.
To disregard those statements now (even if we were convinced of reasons
for doing so) would be not only to disregard stare decisis in statutory
interpretation, but to substitute our revised judgment about the proper
allocation of the costs of harassment for Congress’s considered decision on
the subject.