524 U.S. 775 (1998), Supreme Court of the United States
Faragher v. City of Boca Raton is one of the two landmark 1998 Supreme Court decisions (along with Burlington Industries, Inc.
Under Title VII, when and how is an employer vicariously liable for a hostile work environment created by a supervisor, and what defenses, if any, are available when no tangible employment action has occurred?
An employer is vicariously liable under Title VII for a supervisor's creation of a hostile work environment. If the supervisor's harassment results in a tangible employment action (e.g., hiring, firing, demotion, failure to promote, significant reassignment, or a significant change in benefits), the employer is strictly liable with no affirmative defense. If no tangible employment action occurred, the employer may raise an affirmative defense by proving both: (1) it exercised reasonable care to prevent and promptly correct harassing behavior (typically through an effectively disseminated anti-harassment policy, training, accessible reporting channels, and prompt remediation), and (2) the employee unreasonably failed to take advantage of preventive or corrective opportunities or otherwise to avoid harm. By contrast, for coworker harassment, employer liability turns on negligence—whether the employer knew or should have known and failed to act. The framework relies on common-law agency principles, particularly that a supervisor's authority may aid the harassment (Restatement (Second) of Agency § 219(2)(d)).
The City of Boca Raton is vicariously liable for the hostile work environment created by Faragher's supervisors. Although no tangible employment action occurred, the City failed to establish the affirmative defense because it did not exercise reasonable care to prevent and correct the harassment and could not show that Faragher acted unreasonably in failing to use corrective opportunities she did not effectively have. The Supreme Court reversed the Eleventh Circuit and effectively reinstated the district court's judgment for Faragher.
Faragher, paired with Ellerth, supplies the modern governing test for employer liability in supervisor harassment cases. It instructs courts to distinguish supervisor from coworker harassment, clarifies what constitutes a tangible employment action, and defines the Faragher/Ellerth affirmative defense. For practitioners and employers, it set the compliance blueprint: implement and disseminate clear anti-harassment policies, provide training, ensure multiple reporting channels (including options that bypass the chain of command), and act promptly on complaints. For law students, Faragher is a foundational case on vicarious liability, agency principles in statutory interpretation, and the interaction between remedial goals and doctrinal limits in employment discrimination law.