Beth Ann
Faragher, a former lifeguard for the city of Boca Raton, sued the city
on the grounds that it was responsible for the "hostile work
environment" created by the harassing behavior of two supervisory
lifeguards.
Boca Raton
eventually disciplined the two men whose actions -- vulgar and demeaning
remarks and unwanted touching over a five-year period -- were not in
dispute. The critical issue in this case is the city's own liability,
one of the main unresolved issues in sexual harassment law.
Ms. Faragher
won her case against Boca Raton at trial. But a U.S. Court of Appeals
overturned the judgment in a 7 to 5 decision last year. The majority
cited two main grounds for its decision against holding the city liable;
that the two lifeguard supervisors were simply "seeking to further
personal through their behavior and were not acting on the city's
behalf; and that despite Ms. Faragher's complaint to a third supervisor,
the city could not be held accountable for that man's knowledge of the
problem because he was not a high-ranking manager and had never passed
the information along the chain of command.
Ms.
Faragher's appeal to the Supreme Court argues that, to the contrary, the
supervisors abused their official authority, and the city should be
deemed to have known about it." The record of this case is a textbook
example of agents using what power they have in the circumstances to
sexually harass those who work for them.
