Opinion ID: 1060691
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: impact of faragher and ellerth on carr

Text: Carr is now inconsistent with federal law on supervisor sexual harassment following the recent Supreme Court decisions. Carr employed the pre- Faragher and pre- Ellerth separate categories of quid pro quo and supervisor-created hostile work environment. In Carr , an employer's liability was premised upon a standard of negligence for supervisor-created hostile work environment and upon vicarious liability for quid pro quo harassment. While the terms quid pro quo and hostile work environment are no longer relevant under the federal analysis when determining the employer's standard of liability under Title VII, the terms are relevant for illustrating the distinction between cases involving a threat which is carried out and offensive conduct in general. Ellerth, 118 S.Ct. at 2265. The terms retain further relevance when there is a threshold question whether a plaintiff can prove discrimination in violation of Title VII. Id. The legislature's stated purpose in codifying the THRA was to prohibit discrimination in a manner consistent with the federal Civil Rights Acts of 1964, 1968, and 1972,.... Tenn. Code Ann. § 4-21-101(a)(1), -101(a)(2). Accordingly, we hold that the stated purpose behind the enactment of our THRA will be best served by maintaining continuity between our state law and the federal law on the issue of imposing employer liability for supervisor sexual harassment. We, therefore, adopt the Supreme Court's recently articulated standard of vicarious liability in all supervisor sexual harassment cases. We hold that, under the THRA, an employer is subject to vicarious liability to a victimized employee for actionable hostile work environment sexual harassment by a supervisor with immediate (or successively higher) authority over the employee. The defending employer may raise an affirmative defense to liability or damages when no tangible employment action has been taken. The affirmative defense is comprised of two necessary elements: (1) that the employer exercised reasonable care to prevent and correct promptly any sexually harassing behavior; and (2) that the plaintiff employee unreasonably failed to take advantage of any preventive or corrective opportunities provided by the employer or that the employee unreasonably failed to otherwise avoid the harm. The affirmative defense shall not be available to the employer when the supervisor's sexual harassment has culminated in a tangible employment action. Our decision in Carr is thus modified to reflect the above standard recently articulated by the United States Supreme Court, and Carr is overruled only to the extent that the decision is inconsistent with the above standard.