United States Supreme Court Decision Narrows Employer Liability in Employee Harrassment Lawsuits

Yesterday, the Supreme Court of the United States issued a ruling in a case styled Vance v Ball State.  In their ruling, the Court held that, for purposes of determining whether an employer is vicariously liable for hostile actions of an employee, that person must be a supervisor.  The Court went on to state that a supervisor is one who has the power to “take tangible employment actions against the victim”; usually defined as one who has the power to hire and fire.

This case revolves around allegations by Maetta Vance, an African-American woman who worked at Ball State University (BSU), in its kitchen and catering department, that she was racially harassed.  Vance began working at BSU in 2001, and she was, for many of the years she worked there, the only African-American employee.

While employed by BSU, Vance complained numerous times of racial discrimination and retaliation.  Upon review by the Supreme Court, however, only her complaints involving one employee, Saundra Davis, were at issue.  Davis is a white woman who worked as a catering specialist at BSU, while Vance worked as a catering assistant.

In internal complaints and charges with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), Vance alleged that Davis cornered her on an elevator in a threatening manner, and told her “I’ll do it again.”  And although Justice Alito leaves out these allegations in his description of the facts, Vance also alleged that Davis used the racial slurs “Buckwheat” and “Sambo” to refer to Vance, both in Vance’s presence and outside it.  BSU did take some measures in response to Vance’s complaints, but none was sufficient to resolve the problem.

According to the Supreme Court’s opinion, the parties “vigorously dispute the precise nature and scope of Davis’s duties, but they agree that Davis did not have the power to hire, fire, demote, promote, transfer, or discipline Vance.”

Harassment law divided into two main questions: Did actionable harassment occur? And, if so, can the employer be held liable for it? The second question matters deeply because individual harassers cannot be held liable under Title VII; thus, employer liability means the difference between having a remedy for the wrongs one has suffered and not having one at all.

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