Pennsylvania State Police v. Suders

Summary

The Supreme Court held that Title VII encompasses constructive discharge claims, requiring a showing that discriminatory harassment made working conditions so intolerable that a reasonable person in the employee's position would feel compelled to resign. A hostile-environment constructive discharge is not automatically a 'tangible employment action,' so the Ellerth/Faragher affirmative defense remains available unless the plaintiff quits in reasonable response to an employer-sanctioned official act changing her employment status or situation. Where no official act precipitates the resignation, the defendant employer—not the plaintiff—bears the burden to allege and prove unreasonable failure to use preventive or corrective procedures, and the Court vacated the Third Circuit's contrary categorical rule and remanded. Justice Thomas dissented, contending constructive discharge no longer resembles actual discharge and that liability should turn on employer negligence; he would have reversed.