The self inflicted 'tangible employment action'



The Supreme Court's Faragher/Ellerth standard holds employers strictly liable for sexual harassment committed by their supervisory personnel, unless they can establish a two pronged affirmative defense: establishment of an effective plan to preclude sexual harassment, and the failure of the plaintiff to reasonably avail themselves of that plan. The purpose of the affirmative defense was to provide an incentive for employers to establish effective mechanisms to prevent sexual harassment and an incentive for employees to report sexual harassment, with the underlying assumption that once reported it would be corrected.



However there is an important proviso to the affirmative defense, it is unavailable if the plaintiff has suffered a 'tangible employment action'. The last four years have seen the courts struggle to define what is a 'tangible employment action.' Given the consequence, strict liability, it is not a small stakes fight. Much of the fighting has been over whether acts against those who remain employed, a lateral move, an unsatisfactory evaluation etc. are sufficient to meet the standard.



There is no question that termination is a tangible job action. However, allowing one particular form of termination, constructive discharge, to serve as a bar to the use of the affirmative defense seems contrary to the underlying incentive the Supreme Court was trying to create. Last week, the 8th Circuit with little discussion took that approach. It approved the trial court's conditioning instruction to the jury that it could not consider the affirmative defense if it found that the employee had been 'constructively discharged.' Jaros v. Lodgenet Entertainment.



Although the facts in the Jaros case do not really raise the issue since the plaintiff did in fact complain, this central question of whether or not constructive discharge will block use of the affirmative defense, seems to be a question worth considerable more scrutiny. It remains an open question in at least the 3rd Circuit, Cardenas v. Massey, 269 F.3d 251 (3d Cir. 2001) and the 7th Cir. Wolf v. Northwest Indiana Symphony Society, 250 F.3d 1136 (7th Cir. 2001).



If the 8th Circuit approach is followed, the net result is that an employee without filing a complaint, can quit, and if he or she can overcome the admittedly higher bar of showing constructive discharge, impose strict liability on an employer who had no notice of the misconduct. Perhaps the higher bar that must be met to show constructive discharge, or the underlying philosophy of the Supreme Court that strict liability is appropriate in the first place because employers are the one who control the selection and supervision of their managerial personnel, is sufficient to prevent abuse in this area. It would seem that an approach more designed to avoid 'game playing' and to bolster the incentive to report acts of harassment, would be to hold that constructive discharge, which by its definition is at least on the surface self initiated, is not a tangible employment action.