Cite as: 524 U. S. 775 (1998)
Opinion of the Court
standards for determining an employer's liability for them. There have, for example, been myriad cases in which District Courts and Courts of Appeals have held employers liable on account of actual knowledge by the employer, or high-echelon officials of an employer organization, of sufficiently harassing action by subordinates, which the employer or its informed officers have done nothing to stop. See, e. g., Katz v. Dole, 709 F. 2d 251, 256 (CA4 1983) (upholding employer liability because the "employer's supervisory personnel manifested unmistakable acquiescence in or approval of the harassment"); EEOC v. Hacienda Hotel, 881 F. 2d 1504, 1516 (CA9 1989) (employer liable where hotel manager did not respond to complaints about supervisors' harassment); Hall v. Gus Constr. Co., 842 F. 2d 1010, 1016 (CA8 1988) (holding employer liable for harassment by co-workers because supervisor knew of the harassment but did nothing). In such instances, the combined knowledge and inaction may be seen as demonstrable negligence, or as the employer's adoption of the offending conduct and its results, quite as if they had been authorized affirmatively as the employer's policy. Cf. Oncale, supra, at 77 (victim reported his grounds for fearing rape to company's safety supervisor, who turned him away with no action on complaint).
Nor was it exceptional that standards for binding the employer were not in issue in Harris, supra. In that case of discrimination by hostile environment, the individual charged with creating the abusive atmosphere was the president of the corporate employer, 510 U. S., at 19, who was indisputably within that class of an employer organization's officials who may be treated as the organization's proxy. Burns v. McGregor Electronic Industries, Inc., 955 F. 2d 559, 564 (CA8 1992) (employer-company liable where harassment was perpetrated by its owner); see Torres v. Pisano, 116 F. 3d 625, 634-635, and n. 11 (CA2) (noting that a supervisor may hold a sufficiently high position "in the management hierarchy of the company for his actions to be imputed
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