Quid Pro Quo
The essence of the quid pro quo theory of sexual harassment is that an individual “relies upon his apparent or actual authority [in order] to extort sexual consideration from an employee.” Henson v. City of Dundee, 682 F.2d 897, 910 (11th Cir.1982). The courts have stated that quid pro quo sexual harassment occurs whenever “employers condition employment benefits on sexual favors.” See, e.g., Ellison v. Brady, 924 F.2d 872, 875 (9th Cir.1991).
Hostile Work Environment
Harris v. Forklift Systems, Inc., 510 US 17 – Supreme Court 1993
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 makes it “an unlawful employment practice for an employer . . . to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” 42 U. S. C. § 2000e-2(a)(1). As we made clear in Meritor Savings Bank, FSB v. Vinson, 477 U. S. 57 (1986), this language “is not limited to `economic’ or `tangible’ discrimination. The phrase `terms, conditions, or privileges of employment’ evinces a congressional intent `to strike at the entire spectrum of disparate treatment of men and women’ in employment,” which includes requiring people to work in a discriminatorily hostile or abusive environment. Id., at 64, quoting Los Angeles Dept. of Water and Power v. Manhart, 435 U. S. 702, 707, n. 13 (1978) (some internal quotation marks omitted). When the workplace is permeated with “discriminatory intimidation, ridicule, and insult,” 477 U. S., at 65, that is “sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of the victim’s employment and create an abusive working environment,” id., at 67 (internal brackets and quotation marks omitted), Title VII is violated.
This standard, which we reaffirm today, takes a middle path between making actionable any conduct that is merely offensive and requiring the conduct to cause a tangible psychological injury. As we pointed out in Meritor, “mere utterance of an . . . epithet which engenders offensive feelings in a employee,” ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted) does not sufficiently affect the conditions of employment to implicate Title VII. Conduct that is not severe or pervasive enough to create an objectively hostile or abusive work environment—an environment that a reasonable person would find hostile or abusive—is beyond Title VII’s purview. Likewise, if the victim does not subjectively perceive the environment to be abusive, the conduct has not actually altered the 22*22 conditions of the victim’s employment, and there is no Title VII violation.
But Title VII comes into play before the harassing conduct leads to a nervous breakdown. A discriminatorily abusive work environment, even one that does not seriously affect employees’ psychological well-being, can and often will detract from employees’ job performance, discourage employees from remaining on the job, or keep them from advancing in their careers. Moreover, even without regard to these tangible effects, the very fact that the discriminatory conduct was so severe or pervasive that it created a work environment abusive to employees because of their race, gender, religion, or national origin offends Title VII’s broad rule of workplace equality. The appalling conduct alleged in Meritor, and the reference in that case to environments “`so heavily polluted with discrimination as to destroy completely the emotional and psychological stability of minority group workers,'” id., at 66, quoting Rogers v. EEOC, 454 F. 2d 234, 238 (CA5 1971), cert. denied, 406 U. S. 957 (1972), merely present some especially egregious examples of harassment. They do not mark the boundary of what is actionable.
The proper analysis for employer liability in hostile environment cases is what management-level employees knew or should have known, not whether an employee was acting within his “scope of employment.” See EEOC v. Hacienda Hotel, 881 F.2d 1504, 1515-16 (9th Cir.1989) (“[E]mployers are liable for failing to remedy or prevent a hostile or offensive work environment of which management-level employees knew, or in the exercise of reasonable care should have known.” (emphasis added)).
The “governing law,” see Anderson, 477 U.S. at 248, 106 S.Ct. 2505, requires an employee o generate genuine issues of material fact that the harasser’s conduct “was sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of [Zetwick’s] employment and create an [objectively] abusive working environment.” Craig v. M & O Agencies, Inc., 496 F.3d 1047, 1055 (9th Cir. 2007) (internal quotation marks omitted); see id. (identifying the elements of a prima facie case of a sex-based hostile work environment (internal quotation marks omitted)); accord Geo Grp., Inc., 816 F.3d at 1206 (“An employer is liable under Title VII for conduct giving rise to a hostile environment where the employee proves (1) that he was subjected to verbal or physical conduct of a harassing nature, (2) that this conduct was unwelcome, and (3) that the conduct was sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of the victim’s employment and create an abusive working environment.” (internal quotation marks omitted)).