Opinion ID: 3011207
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Liability under Ellerth and Faragher5

Text: _________________________________________________________________ 4. We must briefly address a certain terminological confusion that Durham uses to argue that the District Court made a mistake in finding employer liability. At one point, the District Court stated that it did not see this case as a disparate treatment case, but as a hostile work environment case. Thus, Durham suggests, only evidence of sexualized abuse or sexual advances is relevant to Evans's claim, and that evidence alone is insufficient. The District Court's characterization lacks analytic precision. Hostile work environment claims are founded in Title VII's prohibition of unequal treatment of men and women; the hostile environment here consisted of abuse that a man in Evans's position would not have suffered. Perhaps the District Court simply meant that there was no other employee who had Evans's abilities and her specially negotiated benefits, so that there was no similarly situated person who could have been better treated. In any event, the Supreme Court has now made clear that labels such as hostile work environment are not dispositive and that the ultimate issue is whether the plaintiff has suffered actionable discrimination based on her sex. See Ellerth, 118 S. Ct. at 2264. 5. Although Judge Garth concurs in the result reached by Chief Judge Becker, he cannot agree that the discussion of when and how the affirmative defense provided by the holdings in Burlington Industries, Inc. v. Ellerth, 118 S. Ct. 2257 (1998), and Faragher v. City of Boca Raton, 118 S. Ct. 2275 (1998), and Chief Judge Becker's attempted clarification of that defense, see infra, have a place in the opinion. As Judge Garth reads the Supreme Court decisions, their holdings are unequivocal and are directly applicable to this appeal without extending the analysis beyond the facts of this case. Ms. Evans provided proof of a tangible adverse employment action (i.e., she was made to leave her job), and this action was on the basis of her supervisors' behavior. Here, Ms. Evans was the subject of a tangible adverse employment action, the District Court found that her supervisors were responsible for her constructive discharge and the District Court returned a verdict compensating her for the damages she suffered. This being so, the initial holding in Faragher and Ellerth attaches and binds us: 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. 13 Durham argues that the District Court applied the wrong liability standard because the Supreme Court's recent sexual harassment liability decisions substantially reshaped the law. In Ellerth and Faragher, the Supreme Court drew a line between (1) discriminatory work-related supervisory acts, such as discriminating against women in work assignments to placate pervasive male hostility or reprimanding women in harsh or vulgar terms while merely bantering with men for identical behavior, and (2) expressing sexual interest in ways having no apparent object whatever of serving an interest of the employer. Faragher, 118 S. Ct. at 2289. _________________________________________________________________ Ellerth, 118 S. Ct. at 2270; Faragher, 118 S. Ct. at 2293. Judge Garth believes that is all the Court is called upon to review through the lens of Ellerth and Faragher and he agrees that the District Court properly entered judgment in favor of Ms. Evans. However, Judge Garth takes no position and disassociates himself from the discussion in Section III.A of Chief Judge Becker's opinion involving situations and examples where no tangible adverse employment action was taken, matters that concern the second holding of Ellerth and Faragher. This second holding provides that [w]hen no tangible employment action is taken, a defending employer may raise an affirmative defense to liability or damages, Ellerth, 118 S. Ct. at 2270; Faragher, 118 S. Ct. at 2293, and specifies the elements that must be established for the defense to prevail. (To the extent that Judge Weis in his concurring opinion would make an affirmative defense available even when a tangible adverse employment action resulted, Judge Garth rejects his analysis as being contrary to and in derogation of the explicit holdings of Ellerth and Faragher). In the present case, there is no issue that requires resort to the second holding, and Judge Garth fears that unnecessary examples and discussion, even in an attempt to enlighten the bar and bench, may only lead to confusion when it does not clarify the standards to which this Court must adhere. In a case such as this one, where Ms. Evans was constructively discharged by her supervisors' action after their own actionable behavior, the holdings and instruction of Ellerth and Faragher are clear: the employer, Durham Life Insurance Company, is automatically liable and no affirmative defense is available. The District Court so held, and Judge Garth, in accordance with the separate opinions of his colleagues, Chief Judge Becker and Judge Weis, agrees that the District Court's judgment must be affirmed. 14 The first kind of discrimination, the Court concluded, would automatically subject the employer to liability because such discrimination is within the scope of the supervisor's employment, even if the employer does not want the supervisor to discriminate. Acts fall within the scope of employment when they are  `of the kind [a servant] is employed to perform,' occurring `substantially within the authorized time and space limits,' and `actuated, at least in part, by a purpose to serve the master.'  Id. at 2286 (quoting Restatement (Second) of Agency S 228(1) (1957) (alteration in original)). The Court further stated that it is accepted that `it is less likely that a willful tort will properly be held to be in the course of employment and that the liability of the master for such torts will naturally be more limited.'  Ellerth, 118 S. Ct. at 2266 (quoting F. Mechem, Outlines of the Law of Agency S 394, at 266 (P. Mechem ed., 4th ed. 1952)). The Court, after citing some of the various conflicting cases on scope of employment, and concluding that sexual harassment by a supervisor is generally not within the scope of employment, see id. at 2267, went on to parse the second category more carefully. In cases of harassment falling outside the scope of employment, the Court found, the employer could be vicariously liable when thetortious conduct is made possible or facilitated by the existence of the actual agency relationship. Faragher, 118 S. Ct. at 2290. The Ellerth/Faragher aided by the agency relation test is divided into two categories: 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 tangible employment action is taken, a defending employer may raise an affirmative defense to liability or damages, subject to proof by a preponderance of the evidence, see Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 8(c). The defense comprises two necessary elements: (a) that the employer exercised reasonable care to prevent and correct promptly any sexually harassing behavior, and (b) that the plaintiff employee unreasonably failed to take advantage of any preventive 15 or corrective opportunities provided by the employer or to avoid harm otherwise. . . . No affirmative defense is available, however, when the supervisor's harassment culminates in a tangible employment action, such as discharge, demotion, or undesirable reassignment. Ellerth, 118 S. Ct. at 2270; see also Faragher, 118 S. Ct. at 2292-93. The aided by the agency relationship test is not, however, all-embracing. Rather, the Court discusses it only as a starting point. Faragher, 118 S. Ct. at 2290 & n.3. One question is whether we should treat the supervisory acts in this case as falling within or without the scope of employment, for the scope of employment discussion is where the Court began its reformulation of Title VII jurisprudence. In a definitional sense, scope of employment plays no role in the Ellerth/Faragher test as such. But a sexual harassment plaintiff might still argue, in an attempt to avoid the affirmative defense, that the harassment she suffered falls within the scope of employment because her harassers intended, at least in part, to serve their employer. For example, the District Court found that McKaskill told Evans that she made too much money for a goddamn woman and that she did not know anything about annuities because she was only a woman. This could readily be interpreted as evidencing a belief that women were not suited to Durham's business and a purpose to serve Durham by ridding it of Evans or at least of the qualities that made Evans stand out from other agents, which qualities the harassers apparently regarded as linked to her womanhood. Although a scope of employment analysis would be theoretically possible here, we apply the Ellerth/Faragher aided by the agency relation test. We would have great difficulty deciding the case on scope of employment grounds in the absence of a specific finding by the District Court about the harassers' intent. We therefore believe that we can better evaluate Evans's claim by asking whether her harassers were aided by the harassment by the agency relation. More generally, we suggest that harassment that could be analyzed as falling within the scope of employment because of a supervisor's biased beliefs about a class of 16 workers--a claim that Evans might be able to make on these facts--might be better evaluated in thefirst instance under the more specifically delineated standards of the Ellerth/Faragher aided by the agency relation test.6 Scope of (Text continued on page 19) _________________________________________________________________ 6. We note that despite the Court's attempt to attain categorical clarity, Faragher, 118 S. Ct. at 2290, there is a potential overlap between harassment falling within the scope of employment and harassment aided by the agency relationship, for scope of employment and aided by the agency relation are not hermetically sealed concepts. Both may fit the facts of a case, yet point towards dramatically different liability standards, since only in an aided by the agency relation situation is the affirmative defense potentially available. An example will elucidate the point. If a male supervisor routinely delivered his reprimands to female employees by way of unwelcome remarks and touching while treating male employees with respect, the conduct would seem to fall in both categories, since the explicit sexual misbehavior would suggest an aided by the agency relationship analysis, while the disparate treatment with respect to work-related activities would put the problem within the scope of employment. Even though unwelcome remarks and touching might be done to gratify the harasser's own desires, this situation would fall within the scope of employment because the harassment would be the supervisor's manner of giving out otherwise authorized reprimands to women. Giving reprimands is clearly within the scope of the supervisor's authority, and the law of agency teaches that the manner of doing an authorized act may subject an employer to liability even though the employer instructs that the act be done differently. See Ellerth, 118 S. Ct. at 2266. Although we doubt such situations occur with any frequency, the example helps develop the issue analytically. The Court's conclusion that sexual harassment will ordinarily fall outside the scope of employment connotes an expectation that sexual harassment is often connected only opportunistically to the work environment--that is, that supervisors' harassment usually does not have any inherent relationship to the fact that the women targeted are working women. However, there may be cases in which a harasser thinks that he is doing what is best for his workforce when he deploys sexual harassment as a weapon to drive female workers away. See, e.g., Steiner v. Showboat Operating Co., 25 F.3d 1459, 1463 (9th Cir. 1994) (finding that a supervisor used sexual harassment to reprimand a female employee for her perceived failings as a worker rather than to fulfill his desires). There are other cases in which sexual harassment seems fundamentally connected to the work situation, as when it is part of a campaign against women in nontraditional jobs. See, e.g., Annis v. 17 County of Westchester, 36 F.3d 251 (2d Cir. 1994); Bohen v. City of East Chicago, 799 F.2d 1180 (7th Cir. 1986); see also Schultz, supra, at 1755-61 (suggesting that a desire to preserve a masculine image of work often motivates sexual harassment). A supervisor who dislikes women for personal reasons may be predisposed to believe, however wrongly, that his employer would be better off without them, and his harassing acts could therefore be thought to fall within the scope of employment. Sexual harassment by co-workers may follow the same pattern and create the same analytic difficulties. The distinction between acts within and without the scope of employment would turn on a fact finder's perception of whether the supervisor believed that he was acting, at least in part, in his employer's interests, perhaps because he believed that men were better workers. Yet it will often be difficult to distinguish personal misogyny falling outside the scope of employment from misogyny directed at female workers. Does a supervisor who satisfies his sexual urges by targeting women he perceives as worthless to his employer's business act sufficiently within the scope of his employment? It is therefore difficult to reconcile intent as the touchstone of scope of employment with Ellerth's blunt statement that [t]he general rule is that sexual harassment by a supervisor is not conduct within the scope of employment. Ellerth, 118 S. Ct. at 2267. We could, of course, understand this as a factual prediction, particularly given the variety of cases discussed--and not completely reconciled--in the two opinions. See id. at 2266-67; Faragher, 118 S. Ct. at 2286-87. But we also consider this statement in light of Faragher's cogent explanation that scope of employment is ultimately a question of law, not fact, expressing a court's conclusion that it is appropriate to hold an employer liable for its agents' acts in a particular case. See Faragher, 118 S. Ct. at 2287-88. In Faragher itself, supervisors, in the course of carrying out their supervisory duties, repeatedly subjected female lifeguards to uninvited and offensive touching and to lewd and discriminatory remarks. See id. at 2280. The Court rejected the argument that harassment is a risk that employers should fairly be required to bear as a cost of doing business and that this kind of harassment should therefore be treated as falling within the scope of employment. See id. at 2288-89. Instead, the Court found that it would be preferable as a matter of social policy to apply the aided by the agency relation test to the facts of that case. See id. at 2292. In short, scope of employment is not a sharply delineated concept in law or logic, and that is what makes it so troublesome. We 18 employment remains an elusive concept, while the Supreme Court has given us clearer instructions on how to determine liability under the aided by the agency relation standard. We are also mindful of the Supreme Court's stated reason for formulating the affirmative defense, the need to give employers incentives to establish antiharassment programs, see Ellerth, 118 S. Ct. at 2270, and believe that too broad an interpretation of scope of employment might make effective anti-harassment programs irrelevant to employer liability in many hostile environment cases, undermining the Court's intent. However, we need not resolve the almost metaphysical questions surrounding scope of employment today, for under Ellerth and Faragher's aided by the agency relation test, sex-based mistreatment by a supervisor--whether overtly sexual or facially neutral and whether motivated by lust or by dislike--creates automatic liability when it rises to the level of a tangible adverse employment action. The Court squarely held that, when there is a tangible adverse employment action or the employer fails to make out its affirmative defense, it is fair and just to hold the employer responsible for harassment. A supervisor can only take a tangible adverse employment action because of the authority delegated by the employer, see Ellerth, 118 S. Ct. at 2269, and thus the employer is properly charged with the consequences of that delegation.7 As we will now _________________________________________________________________ also note our belief that the aided by the agency relation test is similarly a product of legal and policy considerations, and the Court may yet have occasion to revisit the issue to clarify the remaining questions. 7. Concomitantly, we observe that, if the employer does not prove that it exercised due care and that the employee's failure to use its safeguards was unreasonable, the harassment can fairly be said to have been facilitated by the power delegated to the supervisor, and thus aided by the agency relationship. Conversely, if there is no tangible adverse employment action and the employer does prove due care and unreasonable employee behavior, the employer's anti-harassment efforts and the opportunities for redress it offered a harassed employee will generally justify the conclusion that the employer should not be required to bear the costs of supervisory harassment. That is, the aided by the agency relation standard seems to us to reflect a value judgment, not a 19 explain, Evans suffered tangible adverse employment action. Hence we find that the evidence here easily satisfies the Ellerth/Faragher aided by the agency relation test.8