Opinion of the Court

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

No. 96-568

JOSEPH ONCALE, PETITIONER

v.

SUNDOWNER OFFSHORE SERVICES, INCORPORATED, ET AL.

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT

March 4, 1998

JUSTICE SCALIA delivered the opinion of the Court.

This case presents the question whether workplace harassment can violate Title VII's
prohibition against "discriminat[ion] . . . because of . . . sex," 42 U.S.C. § 2000e 2(a)(1),
when the harasser and the harassed employee are of the same sex.

I

The District Court having granted summary judgment for respondent, we must assume the
facts to be as alleged by petitioner Joseph Oncale. The precise details are irrelevant to the
legal point we must decide, and in the interest of both brevity and dignity we shall describe
them only generally. In late October 1991, Oncale was working for respondent
Sundowner Offshore Services on a Chevron U. S. A., Inc., oil platform in the Gulf of
Mexico. He was employed as a roustabout on an eight-man crew which included
respondents John Lyons, Danny Pippen, and Brandon Johnson. Lyons, the crane
operator, and Pippen, the driller, had supervisory authority, App. 41, 77, 43. On several
occasions, Oncale was forcibly subjected to sex related, humiliating actions against him by
Lyons, Pippen and Johnson in the presence of the rest of the crew. Pippen and Lyons
also physically assaulted Oncale in a sexual manner, and Lyons threatened him with rape.

Oncale's complaints to supervisory personnel produced no remedial action; in fact, the
company's Safety Compliance Clerk, Valent Hohen, told Oncale that Lyons and Pippen
"picked [on] him all the time too," and called him a name suggesting homosexuality. Id., at
77. Oncale eventually quit-asking that his pink slip reflect that he "voluntarily left due to
sexual harassment and verbal abuse." Id., at 79. When asked at his deposition why he left
Sundowner, Oncale stated "I felt that if I didn't leave my job, that I would be raped or
forced to have sex." Id., at 71.

Oncale filed a complaint against Sundowner in the United States District Court for the
Eastern District of Louisiana, alleging that he was discriminated against in his employment
because of his sex. Relying on the Fifth Circuit's decision in Garcia v. Elf Atochem
North America , 28 F. 3d 446, 451-452 (CA5 1994), the district court held that "Mr.
Oncale, a male, has no cause of action under Title VII for harassment by male
co-workers." App. 106. On appeal, a panel of the Fifth Circuit concluded that Garcia
was binding Circuit precedent, and affirmed. 83 F. 3d 118 (1996). We granted certiorari.
520 U. S. ___ (1997).

II

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 provides, in relevant part, that "[i]t shall be an
unlawful employment practice for an employer . . . to discriminate against any individual
with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because
of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin." 78 Stat. 255, as
amended, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a)(1). We have held that this not only covers "terms" and
"conditions" in the narrow contractual sense, but "evinces a congressional intent to strike
at the entire spectrum of disparate treatment of men and women in employment." Meritor
Savings Bank, FSB v. Vinson , 477 U.S. 57, 64 (1986) (citations and internal quotation
marks omitted). "When the workplace is permeated with discriminatory intimidation,
ridicule, and insult that is sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of the
victim's employment and create an abusive working environment, Title VII is violated."
Harris v. Forklift Systems, Inc., 510 U.S. 17, 21 (1993) (citations and internal
quotation marks omitted).

Title VII's prohibition of discrimination "because of . . . sex" protects men as well as
women, Newport News Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co. v. EEOC , 462 U.S. 669, 682
(1983), and in the related context of racial discrimination in the workplace we have
rejected any conclusive presumption that an employer will not discriminate against
members of his own race. "Because of the many facets of human motivation, it would be
unwise to presume as a matter of law that human beings of one definable group will not
discriminate against other members of that group." Castaneda v. Partida , 430 U.S.
482, 499 (1977). See also id. , at 515-516 n. 6 (Powell, J., joined by Burger, C. J., and
REHNQUIST , J., dissenting). In Johnson v. Transportation Agency, Santa Clara
Cty. , 480 U.S. 616 (1987), a male employee claimed that his employer discriminated
against him because of his sex when it preferred a female employee for promotion.
Although we ultimately rejected the claim on other grounds, we did not consider it
significant that the supervisor who made that decision was also a man. See id., at
624-625. If our precedents leave any doubt on the question, we hold today that nothing in
Title VII necessarily bars a claim of discrimination "because of . . . sex" merely because
the plaintiff and the defendant (or the person charged with acting on behalf of the
defendant) are of the same sex. Courts have had little trouble with that principle in cases
like Johnson, where an employee claims to have been passed over for a job or
promotion. But when the issue arises in the context of a "hostile environment" sexual
harassment claim, the state and federal courts have taken a bewildering variety of stances.
Some, like the Fifth Circuit in this case, have held that same-sex sexual harassment claims
are never cognizable under Title VII. See also, e.g., Goluszek v. H. P. Smith , 697 F.
Supp. 1452 (ND Ill. 1988). Other decisions say that such claims are actionable only if the
plaintiff can prove that the harasser is homosexual (and thus presumably motivated by
sexual desire). Compare McWilliams v. Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, 72 F.
3d 1191 (CA4 1996), with Wrightson v. Pizza Hut of America, 99 F. 3d 138 (CA4
1996). Still others suggest that workplace harassment that is sexual in content is always
actionable, regardless of the harasser's sex, sexual orientation, or motivations. See Doe v.
Belleville, 119 F. 3d 563 (CA7 1997).

We see no justification in the statutory language or our precedents for a categorical rule
excluding same-sex harassment claims from the coverage of Title VII. As some courts
have observed, male-on-male sexual harassment in the workplace was assuredly not the
principal evil Congress was concerned with when it enacted Title VII. But statutory
prohibitions often go beyond the principal evil to cover reasonably comparable evils, and
it is ultimately the provisions of our laws rather than the principal concerns of our
legislators by which we are governed. Title VII prohibits "discriminat[ion] . . . because of .
. . sex" in the "terms" or "conditions" of employment. Our holding that this includes sexual
harassment must extend to sexual harassment of any kind that meets the statutory
requirements.

Respondents and their amici contend that recognizing liability for same-sex harassment
will transform Title VII into a general civility code for the American workplace. But that
risk is no greater for same-sex than for opposite sex harassment, and is adequately met by
careful attention to the requirements of the statute. Title VII does not prohibit all verbal or
physical harassment in the workplace; it is directed only at " discriminat[ion] . . .
because of . . . sex." We have never held that workplace harassment, even harassment
between men and women, is automatically discrimination because of sex merely because
the words used have sexual content or connotations. "The critical issue, Title VII's text
indicates, is whether members of one sex are exposed to disadvantageous terms or
conditions of employment to which members of the other sex are not exposed." Harris,
supra , at 25 (GINSBURG , J., concurring).

Courts and juries have found the inference of discrimination easy to draw in most
male-female sexual harassment situations, because the challenged conduct typically
involves explicit or implicit proposals of sexual activity; it is reasonable to assume those
proposals would not have been made to someone of the same sex. The same chain of
inference would be available to a plaintiff alleging samesex harassment, if there were
credible evidence that the harasser was homosexual. But harassing conduct need not be
motivated by sexual desire to support an inference of discrimination on the basis of sex. A
trier of fact might reasonably find such discrimination, for example, if a female victim is
harassed in such sex-specific and derogatory terms by another woman as to make it clear
that the harasser is motivated by general hostility to the presence of women in the
workplace. A same-sex harassment plaintiff may also, of course, offer direct comparative
evidence about how the alleged harasser treated members of both sexes in a mixed-sex
workplace. Whatever evidentiary route the plaintiff chooses to follow, he or she must
always prove that the conduct at issue was not merely tinged with offensive sexual
connotations, but actually constituted " discrimina[tion] . . . because of . . . sex."

And there is another requirement that prevents Title VII from expanding into a general
civility code: As we emphasized in Meritor and Harris , the statute does not reach
genuine but innocuous differences in the ways men and women routinely interact with
members of the same sex and of the opposite sex. The prohibition of harassment on the
basis of sex requires neither asexuality nor androgyny in the workplace; it forbids only
behavior so objectively offensive as to alter the "conditions" of the victim's employment.
"Conduct that is not severe or pervasive enough to create an objectively hostile or abusive
work environment-an environment that a reasonable person would find hostile or
abusive-is beyond Title VII's purview." Harris, 510 U. S., at 21, citing Meritor, 477 U.
S. at 67. We have always regarded that requirement as crucial, and as sufficient to ensure
that courts and juries do not mistake ordinary socializing in the workplace-such as
male-on-male horseplay or intersexual flirtation-for discriminatory "conditions of
employment."

We have emphasized, moreover, that the objective severity of harassment should be
judged from the perspective of a reasonable person in the plaintiff's position, considering
"all the circumstances." Harris, supra, at 23. In same-sex (as in all) harassment cases,
that inquiry requires careful consideration of the social context in which particular behavior
occurs and is experienced by its target. A professional football player's working
environment is not severely or pervasively abusive, for example, if the coach smacks him
on the buttocks as he heads onto the field-even if the same behavior would reasonably be
experienced as abusive by the coach's secretary (male or female) back at the office. The
real social impact of workplace behavior often depends on a constellation of surrounding
circumstances, expectations, and relationships which are not fully captured by a simple
recitation of the words used or the physical acts performed. Common sense, and an
appropriate sensitivity to social context, will enable courts and juries to distinguish
between simple teasing or roughhousing among members of the same sex, and conduct
which a reasonable person in the plaintiff's position would find severely hostile or abusive.

III

Because we conclude that sex discrimination consisting of same-sex sexual harassment is
actionable under Title VII, the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit is
reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.