Clark County School Dist. v. Breeden, 532 U.S. 268, 3 (2001)

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270

CLARK COUNTY SCHOOL DIST. v. BREEDEN

Per Curiam

superintendent of petitioner. Her first claim of retaliation asserts that she was punished for these complaints.

The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has applied § 2000e-3(a) to protect employee "oppos[ition]" not just to practices that are actually "made . . . unlawful" by Title VII, but also to practices that the employee could reasonably believe were unlawful. 2000 WL 991821, at *1 (stating that respondent's opposition was protected "if she had a reasonable, good faith belief that the incident involving the sexually explicit remark constituted unlawful sexual harassment"); Trent v. Valley Electric Assn. Inc., 41 F. 3d 524, 526 (CA9 1994). We have no occasion to rule on the propriety of this interpretation, because even assuming it is correct, no one could reasonably believe that the incident recounted above violated Title VII.

Title VII forbids actions taken on the basis of sex that "discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment." 42 U. S. C. § 2000e-2(a)(1). Just three Terms ago, we reiterated, what was plain from our previous decisions, that sexual harassment is actionable under Title VII only if it is "so 'severe or pervasive' as to 'alter the conditions of [the victim's] employment and create an abusive working environment.' " Faragher v. Boca Raton, 524 U. S. 775, 786 (1998) (quoting Meritor Savings Bank, FSB v. Vinson, 477 U. S. 57, 67 (1986) (some internal quotation marks omitted)). See also Burlington Industries, Inc. v. Ellerth, 524 U. S. 742, 752 (1998) (Only harassing conduct that is "severe or pervasive" can produce a "constructive alteratio[n] in the terms or conditions of employment"); Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc., 523 U. S. 75, 81 (1998) (Title VII "forbids only behavior so objectively offensive as to alter the 'conditions' of the victim's employment"). Workplace conduct is not measured in isolation; instead, "whether an environment is sufficiently hostile or abusive" must be judged "by 'looking at all the circumstances,' including the 'frequency of the dis-

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