The issue of sexual harassment in the workplace has received significant attention in recent months amid reports of harassment and sexual assault by high-level executives, managers, and employees across a range of industries. This attention has prompted inquiries into the prevalence of harassment, the scope and sufficiency of legal protection for harassment victims, and issues ranging from the use of confidentiality provisions in settlement agreements that preclude victims from speaking publicly about allegations to how to improve procedures by which employees can seek remedy for harassment in all three branches of government. This report addresses various legal issues related to sexual harassment and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII), the federal statute that generally prohibits discrimination in the workplace, including discrimination based on sex. As the statute contains neither an express prohibition against harassment nor a definition of harassment, this report examines (1) how the Supreme Court and federal appellate courts have mapped out the scope of protection that Title VII provides employees against sexual harassment, including the Supreme Court's "severe or pervasive" standard that harassment victims must meet to show a Title VII violation (which applies to most Title VII sexual harassment claims); (2) limits on employer liability for harassment; and (3) retaliation for reporting harassment, among other issues. Title VII makes it unlawful for employers to discriminate "against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin." Though Title VII's antidiscrimination provisions do not expressly prohibit harassment, the Supreme Court and federal circuit courts interpret Title VII's prohibition against discrimination in the "terms, conditions, or privileges of employment" to prohibit harassment based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. When a plaintiff raises a Title VII harassment claim, federal courts often describe the action as alleging "harassment" or a "hostile work environment." The interchangeable use of those terms is perhaps best understood as reflecting the current statutory anchor of a Title VII harassment action: as the statute does not expressly prohibit or define harassment, such claims are framed as violations of Title VII's prohibition against a discriminatory and abusive work environment, based on the phrase "terms, conditions, or privileges of employment." The Supreme Court's legal standard for analyzing harassment claims—including sexual harassment claims—primarily focuses on whether the alleged conduct is "severe or pervasive" enough to create an abusive or hostile work environment for the victim. Under this existing standard, even if a victim were to experience offensive or harassing conduct, a harasser's actions will not constitute a Title VII violation unless those acts in total were "severe or pervasive" enough to create an "abusive" or "hostile" work environment. To prevail on such a claim, a plaintiff must generally (1) establish the requisite elements of a hostile work environment claim and (2) show a basis for holding the employer liable for that abusive or hostile conduct. A plaintiff can also show a violation of Title VII based on quid pro quo harassment, also discussed in this report. Courts vary in their formulations of this overall analysis, but generally require that the plaintiff satisfy the following elements to establish a prima facie showing of actionable harassment (including that the conduct was sufficiently severe or pervasive, as analyzed under the last "objective" prong): he or she belongs to a protected category under Title VII; the conduct was unwelcome; the conduct was based on the plaintiff's protected category; the plaintiff subjectively viewed the harassment as creating an abusive work environment; and a "reasonable" person would also objectively view the work environment as abusive. This last objective prong typically constitutes the most probing aspect of the analysis and is the point at which courts apply language from the Supreme Court decision, Harris v. Forklift Systems, Inc. , to assess the severity or pervasiveness of the conduct. More specifically, federal courts apply Harris 's instruction that a court should consider "all the circumstances," including "the frequency of the discriminatory conduct; its severity; whether it is physically threatening or humiliating, or a mere offensive utterance; and whether it unreasonably interferes with an employee's work performance." It should be noted that the Court has characterized its own Title VII hostile work environment jurisprudence as "mak[ing] clear that conduct must be extreme to amount to a change in the terms and conditions of employment," and has noted that the rationale for such a standard is to "ensure that Title VII does not become a 'general civility code.'" "A recurring point in [our] opinions," the Court stated in Faragher v. City of Boca Raton , "is that 'simple teasing,' offhand comments, and isolated incidents (unless extremely serious) will not amount to discriminatory changes in the 'terms and conditions of employment.'" Failure to show sufficient severity or pervasiveness, under the objective prong of the analysis, is often the basis for dismissal of a Title VII harassment claim, in instances when a defense does not apply. Courts repeatedly note the difficulty of assessing whether harassing conduct is sufficiently severe or pervasive under Harris to amount to a Title VII violation and the high bar for showing such actionable harassment. As the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (Second Circuit) has observed, "[t]he line between complaints that are easily susceptible to dismissal as a matter of law and those that are not is indistinct. . . . And on either side of the line there are . . . gradations of abusiveness." As addressed in further detail below, there is substantial variance among federal circuit courts in terms of their application of this fact-intensive inquiry. Though the Supreme Court in Harris observed that "[t]his is not, and by its nature cannot be, a mathematically precise test," appellate courts have since applied Harris with an emphasis on frequency, often numerically counting instances of harassment, noting the duration of the harassment and the severity of the conduct. As a general matter, courts most readily conclude that alleged conduct is sufficiently severe or pervasive when the behavior constitutes rape or involved physical threats at work, repeated solicitation for sex, repeated touching of intimate body parts, and/or daily or regular verbal harassment. Even when addressing conduct with these characteristics, however, federal appellate case law reflects divergent analyses based on seemingly similar facts. Below are selected cases addressing harassment claims alleging serious physical and verbal misconduct, with fact-specific discussion to demonstrate applications of the "severe or pervasive" standard to behavior that could be characterized as egregious. For example, in Turner v. The Saloon , Ltd ., the Seventh Circuit held that evidence was sufficient to create a triable issue that the harassment was sufficiently severe or pervasive, where the harasser grabbed the plaintiff's genitals, asked the plaintiff to kiss her, pressed against the plaintiff asking if he missed her, grabbed his buttocks, and told him she missed seeing him naked when she saw plaintiff change into his work uniform. When faced with potentially similar facts in LeGrand v. Area Resources for Community and Human Services , however, the Eighth Circuit held that the evidence was insufficient to show actionable harassment, where the harasser forcibly kissed the plaintiff "in the mouth," grabbed the plaintiff's buttocks, reached for the plaintiff's genitals, gripped the plaintiff's thigh, asked the plaintiff to watch pornographic movies with him, and on another occasion suggested that the plaintiff would advance in the company if he (the plaintiff) engaged in sexual conduct with the harasser while watching pornographic movies. Meanwhile, the First Circuit held in Gerald v. University of Puerto Rico that the harasser's conduct—solicitation for sex on one occasion, touching the victim's breast on another occasion, and asking her in front of other co-workers why she would not have sex with him—was sufficiently severe or pervasive to constitute actionable harassment. Yet in Brooks v. City of San Mateo , the Ninth Circuit held that the harasser's conduct did not amount to severe or pervasive harassment, where the harasser touched the plaintiff's stomach while she was working and made a sexual comment, forced his hand underneath her sweater and bra to touch her bare breast, and then approached her as though he was going to "fondle her breasts again." The court emphasized that the conduct was "highly reprehensible," but under the applicable standard, repeatedly characterized the behavior as a single episode of harassment and an "entirely isolated incident." A court's characterization of both the legal standard and the conduct at issue appears to significantly shape the analysis, and, correspondingly, the variability of the analyses. In Turner , for example, the Seventh Circuit emphasized that if there is touching of an intimate body part, such evidence weighs "most heavily" in determining whether the harassment is actionable. The court additionally stated that the harasser's grabbing of the plaintiff's genitals was "probably severe enough on its own to create a genuine issue of material fact" that the harassment was objectively severe or pervasive. In LeGrand , however, the Eighth Circuit characterized the conduct as being "manifestly inappropriate," but composed of only "three isolated incidents, which occurred over a nine-month period," thus rendering the conduct—in the court's view—"not so severe or pervasive as to poison [the plaintiff]'s work environment." The court in LeGrand also characterized the evidence as not demonstrating incidents that were "physically violent or overtly threatening." As circuit precedent is controlling on both the circuit itself and lower courts within the circuit, older circuit precedent—by establishing minimum thresholds for conduct that constitutes actionable harassment—continues to shape recent analyses. More specifically, if circuit courts have held that certain fact patterns, as a matter of law, are insufficient to show the requisite severity or pervasiveness, lower courts in the circuit have accordingly held that fact patterns concerning similarly or less egregious conduct also do not amount to actionable harassment.