Throughout the 1980s, feminist activists were integrally involved in the development of sexual harassment jurisprudence, participating in all of the precedent- setting sexual harassment cases. The powerful collaboration of diverse constituencies working against sexual harassment peaked at two points in the 1980s – in efforts to preserve the EEOC guidelines in 1981 and in broad support for the plaintiff Mechelle Vinson in the first Supreme Court sexual harassment case. In 1986, the Supreme Court finally spoke on the issue of sexual harassment in the case of Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson. To feminists’ delight, the Court ruled that Title VII prohibited sexual harassment, including both quid pro quo and hostile environment harassment. The Court, however, erected several obstacles to obtaining relief, most notably rejecting the lower court's ruling that employers were strictly liable for sexual harassment by supervisors. As sexual harassment came to dominate headlines more and more in the 1990s, the courts continued to struggle with an array of legal questions left open by this decision.

THE SUPREME COURT CASE

Mechelle Vinson began working at Meritor Savings Bank in 1974 under the supervision of Sidney Taylor, a vice-president of the bank and branch manager of the bank. Both Vinson and Taylor were African-American. According to Vinson, Taylor repeatedly forced her to engage in sexual relations, usually at the bank, both during and after business hours. Vinson estimated that over the next two years she had sexual intercourse with Taylor forty to fifty times and that on one occasion in May 1976 he so brutally raped her that it led to serious vaginal bleeding for which she was required to seek a doctor's care. Vinson also alleged that Taylor fondled her breasts and buttocks on the job, sometimes in the presence of co-workers, followed her into the ladies‘ room when she was there alone, and exposed himself to her several times.

According to Vinson, sexual intercourse between them ceased in 1977, when she started regularly dating another man. She testified that when she refused to continue having sex with him, Taylor retaliated by tampering with her personnel records, lodging false complaints about her work performance with management, denigrating and abusing her in front of other employees, entrapping her into work errors, and threatening her life when she threatened to report him.