{"id":1573,"date":"2012-07-27T19:53:59","date_gmt":"2012-07-27T23:53:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/hlpr\/?p=1573"},"modified":"2015-10-02T15:23:09","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T15:23:09","slug":"looking-ahead-to-ot-2012-who-is-a-supervisor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/2012\/07\/27\/looking-ahead-to-ot-2012-who-is-a-supervisor\/","title":{"rendered":"Looking ahead to OT 2012: Who is a supervisor?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>By Anne King<\/p>\n<p><\/em>Next term, in\u00a0<em>Vance v. Ball State University<\/em>, the Supreme Court will consider the question of who qualifies as a supervisor to hold an employer liabile for workplace harassment under Title VII.<\/p>\n<p>This question matters quite a lot because, under the\u00a0<em>Faragher<\/em>\/<em>Ellerth<\/em>\u00a0doctrine (named for\u00a0<em>Faragher v. City of Boca Raton<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0<em>Burlington Industries, Inc. v. Ellert<\/em>h, decided in 1998), employers are vicariously liable for harassment by a supervisor. But, in the case of harassment by a co-worker, the victim must show negligence by the employer. (By the way, there\u2019s a\u00a0<em>third<\/em>\u00a0test when the hostile work environment is connected to an adverse employment action.)<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nThe exact\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20120727221043\/http:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/qp\/11-00556qp.pdf\">question<\/a>\u00a0before the Court is whether\u00a0<em>Faragher<\/em>\/<em>Ellerth<\/em>\u00a0\u201capplies to harassment by those whom the employer vests with authority to direct and oversee their victim\u2019s daily work\u201d or \u201cis limited to those harassers who have the power to \u2018hire, fire, demote, promote, transfer, or discipline\u2019 their victim.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s a fairly clear-cut split among the circuits on this issue. The Second, Fourth, and Ninth Circuit adopted the \u201cdirect and oversee\u201d test, while the First, Seventh, and Eighth Circuits held that \u201cpower to hire, fire, discipline, etc.\u201d characterizes a supervisor. (In\u00a0<em>Vance<\/em>, the Seventh Circuit followed circuit precedent dating back to 1998, just after the\u00a0<em>Faraghe<\/em>r and\u00a0<em>Ellerth<\/em>\u00a0decisions.)<\/p>\n<p>I have a few initial thoughts on the Court\u2019s possible direction in Vance \u2013 and the first is that the Court\u2019s grant of cert itself may offer a clue to the outcome. It\u2019s often said that the Court grants cert in order to reverse (in fact, it\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20120727221043\/http:\/\/www.scotusblog.com\/statistics\">reversed just under two thirds<\/a>of merits cases in OT2011). \u00a0 But it\u2019s difficult to assess whether that\u2019s the case here, at least without knowing if the Court recently entertained petitions from circuits that adopted the \u201cdirect and oversee\u201d test.<\/p>\n<p>Second, the Court\u2019s recent employment decisions may provide insight. In recent years the Court\u2019s record on employment issues has been mixed, with some victories for employers (<em>Wal-Mart<\/em>) and some good decisions for employees, especially in the area of retaliation (<em>Crawford<\/em>,\u00a0<em>Kasten<\/em>,\u00a0<em>Thompson<\/em>).<\/p>\n<p>The most relevant recent case is probably\u00a0<em>Staub v. Proctor Hospital<\/em>, decided in 2011.\u00a0 In\u00a0<em>Staub<\/em>, the Court considered the scope of employer liability for discrimination when the person who made an adverse employment decision is influenced by another person who has discriminatory animus against the employee (this is called the \u201ccat\u2019s paw doctrine\u201d).\u00a0 Staub\u2019s supervisor exhibited clear animus at his military status \u2013 but a human resources manager made the actual decision to terminate him.\u00a0 The Court ruled for Staub, holding that the employer could be held liable for discriminatory termination because human resources based its decision on a complaint by Staub\u2019s supervisor.\u00a0 Importantly for\u00a0<em>Vance,<\/em><em>\u00a0<\/em>the decision acknowledged that, in the contemporary workplace, formal decisionmaking about employment status is often separate from direction of day to day activities.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, given the circuit split, the court may simply adopt one of the two rules.\u00a0 But one can imagine a decision in which the Court rejects the Seventh Circuit\u2019s \u201cpower to hire, fire, discipline\u201d rule and adopts a more limited version of the \u201cdirect and oversee\u201d rule.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Anne King Next term, in\u00a0Vance v. Ball State University, the Supreme Court will consider the question of who qualifies [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZQka-pn","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1573\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}