The Supreme Court of the United States - Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc. lyrics

Justice SCALIA delivered the opinion of the Court. This case presents the question whether workplace hara**ment can violate Title VII's prohibition against “discriminat[ion] ... because of ... s**,” 42 U.S.C. § 2000e–2(a)(1), when the hara**er and the hara**ed employee are of the same s**. I The District Court having granted summary judgment for respondents, we must a**ume the facts to be as alleged by petitioner Joseph Oncale. The precise details are irrelevant to the legal point we must decide, and in the interest of both brevity and dignity we shall describe them only generally. In late October 1991, Oncale was working for respondent Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc., on a Chevron U.S. A., Inc., oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico. He was employed as a roustabout on an eight-man crew which included respondents John Lyons, Danny Pippen, and Brandon Johnson. Lyons, the crane operator, and Pippen, the driller, had supervisory authority, App. 41, 77, 43. On several occasions, Oncale was forcibly subjected to s**-related, humiliating actions against him by Lyons, Pippen, and Johnson in the presence of the rest of the crew. Pippen and Lyons also physically a**aulted Oncale in a s**ual manner, and Lyons threatened him with rape. Oncale's complaints to supervisory personnel produced no remedial action; in fact, the company's Safety Compliance Clerk, Valent Hohen, told Oncale that Lyons and Pippen “picked [on] him all the time too,” and called him a name suggesting h*mos**uality. Id., at 77. Oncale eventually quit—asking that his pink slip reflect that he “voluntarily left due to s**ual hara**ment and verbal abuse.” Id., at 79. When asked at his deposition why he left Sundowner, Oncale stated: “I felt that if I didn't leave my job, that I would be raped or forced to have s**.” Id., at 71. Oncale filed a complaint against Sundowner in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, alleging that he was discriminated against in his employment because of his s**. Relying on the Fifth Circuit's decision in Garcia v. Elf Atochem North America, 28 F.3d 446, 451–452 (1994), the District Court held that “Mr. Oncale, a male, has no cause of action under Title VII for hara**ment by male co-workers.” App. 106. On appeal, a panel of the Fifth Circuit concluded that Garcia was binding Circuit precedent, and affirmed. 83 F.3d 118 (1996). We granted certiorari. 520 U.S. 1263, 117 S.Ct. 2430, 138 L.Ed.2d 192 (1997). II Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 provides, in relevant part, that “[i]t shall be 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, s**, or national origin.” 78 Stat. 255, as amended, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e–2(a)(1). We have held that this not only covers “terms” and “conditions” in the narrow contractual sense, but “evinces a congressional intent to strike at the entire spectrum of disparate treatment of men and women in employment.” Meritor Savings Bank, FSB v. Vinson, 477 U.S. 57, 64, 106 S.Ct. 2399, 2404, 91 L.Ed.2d 49 (1986) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). “When the workplace is permeated with discriminatory intimidation, ridicule, and insult that is sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of the victim's employment and create an abusive working environment, Title VII is violated.” Harris v. Forklift Systems, Inc., 510 U.S. 17, 21, 114 S.Ct. 367, 370, 126 L.Ed.2d 295 (1993) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). Title VII's prohibition of discrimination “because of ... s**” protects men as well as women, Newport News Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co. v. EEOC, 462 U.S. 669, 682, 103 S.Ct. 2622, 2630, 77 L.Ed.2d 89 (1983), and in the related context of racial discrimination in the workplace we have rejected any conclusive presumption that an employer will not discriminate against members of his own race. “Because of the many facets of human motivation, it would be unwise to presume as a matter of law that human beings of one definable group will not discriminate against other members of their group.” Castaneda v. Partida, 430 U.S. 482, 499, 97 S.Ct. 1272, 1282, 51 L.Ed.2d 498 (1977). See also id., at 514 n. 6, 97 S.Ct., at 1290 n. 6 (Powell, J., joined by Burger, C.J., and REHNQUIST, J., dissenting). In Johnson v. Transportation Agency, Santa Clara Cty., 480 U.S. 616, 107 S.Ct. 1442, 94 L.Ed.2d 615 (1987), a male employee claimed that his employer discriminated against him because of his s** when it preferred a female employee for promotion. Although we ultimately rejected the claim on other grounds, we did not consider it significant that the supervisor who made that decision was also a man. See id., at 624–625, 107 S.Ct., at 1447–1448. If our precedents leave any doubt on the question, we hold today that nothing in Title VII necessarily bars a claim of discrimination “because of ... s**” merely because the plaintiff and the defendant (or the person charged with acting on behalf of the defendant) are of the same s**. Courts have had little trouble with that principle in cases like Johnson, where an employee claims to have been pa**ed over for a job or promotion. But when the issue arises in the context of a “hostile environment” s**ual hara**ment claim, the state and federal courts have taken a bewildering variety of stances. Some, like the Fifth Circuit in this case, have held that same-s** s**ual hara**ment claims are never cognizable under Title VII. See also, e.g., Goluszek v. H.P. Smith, 697 F.Supp. 1452 (N.D.Ill.1988). Other decisions say that such claims are actionable only if the plaintiff can prove that the hara**er is h*mos**ual (and thus presumably motivated by s**ual desire). Compare McWilliams v. Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, 72 F.3d 1191 (C.A.4 1996), with Wrightson v. Pizza Hut of America, 99 F.3d 138 (C.A.4 1996). Still others suggest that workplace hara**ment that is s**ual in content is always actionable, regardless of the hara**er's s**, s**ual orientation, or motivations. See Doe v. Belleville, 119 F.3d 563 (C.A.7 1997). We see no justification in the statutory language or our precedents for a categorical rule excluding same-s** hara**ment claims from the coverage of Title VII. As some courts have observed, male-on-male s**ual hara**ment in the workplace was a**uredly not the principal evil Congress was concerned with when it enacted Title VII. But statutory prohibitions often go beyond the principal evil to cover reasonably comparable evils, and it is ultimately the provisions of our laws rather than the principal concerns of our legislators by which we are governed. Title VII prohibits “discriminat [ion]... because of ... s**” in the “terms” or “conditions” of employment. Our holding that this includes s**ual hara**ment must extend to s**ual hara**ment of any kind that meets the statutory requirements. Respondents and their amici contend that recognizing liability for same-s** hara**ment will transform Title VII into a general civility code for the American workplace. But that risk is no greater for same-s** than for opposite-s** hara**ment, and is adequately met by careful attention to the requirements of the statute. Title VII does not prohibit all verbal or physical hara**ment in the workplace; it is directed only at “ discriminat [ion] ... because of ... s**.” We have never held that workplace hara**ment, even hara**ment between men and women, is automatically discrimination because of s** merely because the words used have s**ual content or connotations. “The critical issue, Title VII's text indicates, is whether members of one s** are exposed to disadvantageous terms or conditions of employment to which members of the other s** are not exposed.” Harris, supra, at 25, 114 S.Ct., at 372 (GINSBURG, J., concurring). Courts and juries have found the inference of discrimination easy to draw in most male-female s**ual hara**ment situations, because the challenged conduct typically involves explicit or implicit proposals of s**ual activity; it is reasonable to a**ume those proposals would not have been made to someone of the same s**. The same chain of inference would be available to a plaintiff alleging same-s** hara**ment, if there were credible evidence that the hara**er was h*mos**ual. But hara**ing conduct need not be motivated by s**ual desire to support an inference of discrimination on the basis of s**. A trier of fact might reasonably find such discrimination, for example, if a female victim is hara**ed in such s**-specific and derogatory terms by another woman as to make it clear that the hara**er is motivated by general hostility to the presence of women in the workplace. A same-s** hara**ment plaintiff may also, of course, offer direct comparative evidence about how the alleged hara**er treated members of both s**es in a mixed-s** workplace. Whatever evidentiary route the plaintiff chooses to follow, he or she must always prove that the conduct at issue was not merely tinged with offensive s**ual connotations, but actually constituted “ discrimina[tion] ... because of ... s**.” And there is another requirement that prevents Title VII from expanding into a general civility code: As we emphasized in Meritor and Harris, the statute does not reach genuine but innocuous differences in the ways men and women routinely interact with members of the same s** and of the opposite s**. The prohibition of hara**ment on the basis of s** requires neither as**uality nor androgyny in the workplace; it forbids only behavior so objectively offensive as to alter the “conditions” of the victim's employment. “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.” Harris, 510 U.S., at 21, 114 S.Ct., at 370, citing Meritor, 477 U.S., at 67, 106 S.Ct., at 2405–2406. We have always regarded that requirement as crucial, and as sufficient to ensure that courts and juries do not mistake ordinary socializing in the workplace—such as male-on-male horseplay or inters**ual flirtation—for discriminatory “conditions of employment.” We have emphasized, moreover, that the objective severity of hara**ment should be judged from the perspective of a reasonable person in the plaintiff's position, considering “all the circumstances.” Harris, supra, at 23, 114 S.Ct., at 371. In same-s** (as in all) hara**ment cases, that inquiry requires careful consideration of the social context in which particular behavior occurs and is experienced by its target. A professional football player's working environment is not severely or pervasively abusive, for example, if the coach smacks him on the bu*tocks as he heads onto the field—even if the same behavior would reasonably be experienced as abusive by the coach's secretary (male or female) back at the office. The real social impact of workplace behavior often depends on a constellation of surrounding circumstances, expectations, and relationships which are not fully captured by a simple recitation of the words used or the physical acts performed. Common sense, and an appropriate sensitivity to social context, will enable courts and juries to distinguish between simple teasing or roughhousing among members of the same s**, and conduct which a reasonable person in the plaintiff's position would find severely hostile or abusive. III Because we conclude that s** discrimination consisting of same-s** s**ual hara**ment is actionable under Title VII, the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered. Justice THOMAS, concurring. I concur because the Court stresses that in every s**ual hara**ment case, the plaintiff must plead and ultimately prove Title VII's statutory requirement that there be discrimination “because of ... s**.”