Opinion ID: 1965139
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Respondeat Superior Principles

Text: ¶ 28. Alberte urges us to hold that the phrase and any agent plainly indicates that Congress intended to define employer to include individual agents. ¶ 29. We are not convinced that the phrase and any agent in the definition of employer plainly means that Congress intended to impose liability on individual agents. Instead, we agree with the many federal circuit courts that have concluded that Congress used the phrase and any agent to ensure that employer liability would be limited by the principles of respondeat superior. See Wathen, 115 F.3d at 405-06; Tomka, 66 F.3d at 1316; Gary, 59 F.3d at 1399; AIC, 55 F.3d at 1281; Grant, 21 F.3d at 652; Miller, 991 F.2d at 587. ¶ 30. This conclusion finds strong support in the United States Supreme Court's statement that Congress' decision to define `employer' to include any `agent' of an employer, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e(b), surely evinces an intent to place some limits on the acts of employees for which employers under Title VII are to be held responsible. Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson, 477 U.S. 57, 72 (1986). Meritor held that in accordance with principles of agency law, Title VII does not automatically subject employers to liability for sexual harassment by their supervisors. Id. at 72. Subsequent Supreme Court decisions have confirmed the notion that by defining employer to include any agent, Congress intended to make clear that employers' vicarious liability is subject to the limits of respondeat superior. See Burlington Industries, Inc. v. Ellerth, 524 U.S. 742, 763-64, 118 S.Ct. 2257 (1998)([W]e are bound by our holding in Meritor that agency principles constrain the imposition of vicarious liability in cases of supervisory harassment.); Faragher v. City of Boca Raton, 524 U.S. 775, 791-92, 118 S.Ct. 2275 (1998)(affirming Meritor 's conclusion that Congress's use of the word agent means that employers are not automatically liable for sexual harassment by supervisors). ¶ 31. Citing Ball v. Renner, 54 F.3d 664, 666 (10th Cir. 1995), Alberte contends that this reasoning renders the phrase and any agent superfluous, because liability against an employing agency would necessarily be governed by principles of respondeat superior, whether or not this phrase was included in the definition of employer. Alberte also argues that if traditional principles of agency law govern Title VII and the ADA, then agents should be held jointly and severally liable for their discriminatory acts. ¶ 32. We are unconvinced by these arguments. To begin with, Ball v. Renner itself is in uneasy tension with Sauers v. Salt Lake County, 1 F.3d 1122, 1125 (10th Cir. 1993), and Haynes v. Williams, 88 F.3d at 901 (10th Cir. 1996), both of which held that Title VII does not permit actions against individual supervisors in their personal capacities. ¶ 33. Furthermore, what Meritor and its progeny conclusively establish is that the agent clause is not mere surplusage, because Congress explicitly chose to apply agency principles to a determination of the scope of an employer's liability. Tomka, 66 F.3d at 1316. In other words, the fact that the analysis in Meritor, Burlington, and Faragher was guided by the and any agent phrase shows that the phrase is not surplusage. Instead, it serves the purpose of guiding courts in deciding whether an employer may be held liable for the acts of its employees. [5] [3] ¶ 34. Moreover, the idea that Congress added the phrase and any agent to Title VII in order to clarify that respondeat superior principles should apply to the definition of employer is also consistent with Meritor 's statement that common law agency principles may not be transferable in all their particulars to Title VII. Meritor, 477 U.S. at 72. Alberte's argument that the phrase and any agent incorporates all common law agency principles into Title VII and the ADA conflicts with this explicit statement in Meritor. Instead, we are persuaded that Congress added the phrase and any agent merely to clarify that employer liability should be limited by respondeat superior principles.