If you have been in the workforce long enough, you have gotten used to how employers hide their incompetence and their sneaky maneuvers behind euphemisms. In the 1990s, white collar employees whose workplaces had recently introduced email accounts used to circulate email forwards about corporate doublespeak; inevitably, someone would print them out and post them on a bulletin board in the copy room. While you waited for the copy machine to heat up, your eyes would drift to the part about how “downsizing” means that you are toast.
More recently, there have been TikTok videos and YouTube shorts about workers’ least favorite workplace phrases; “circle back” and “interface” as a verb tend to take the top spots. By this logic, “wrongful termination in violation of public policy” sounds like it must be something bad, like something you have to read more than halfway through Orwell’s 1984 to find.
Yes, wrongful termination in violation of public policy is something bad, and workers are the ones who get the worst of it, but you have the right to sue your employer if you are on the receiving end of this illegal act. The Bozeman wrongful termination violation of public policy lawyers at HKM Employment Attorneys LLP can help you if your employer terminated your employment in violation of public policy.
Protected Activities and Employer Retaliation
Even though the phrase “wrongful termination in violation of public policy” sounds so vague that you could broadly apply it to almost all wrongful termination cases, it refers to a specific category of wrongful termination of employment. You can sue your employer for wrongful termination in violation of public policy if your employer fired you in retaliation for engaging in a legally protected activity. In other words, we should interpret “public policy” in this context to mean the rights of workers, not simply all rules that affect the public.
Protected activities are actions that support the employee’s basic physical and financial well-being, even though the employer might find them burdensome. Some of them involve asking the employer to cover certain expenses or to reduce your workload temporarily or permanently, when the reduction in pay does not make up for your reduction in work dollar for dollar. Other protected activities involve employee complaints that, if we looked at them through the perspective of the employer and through the most self-interested lens possible, would count as snitching.
Employer retaliation laws make it illegal for the employer to fire you in response to your engaging in a protected activity. It also counts as employer retaliation if your employer lets you keep your job but takes another adverse action against you as retaliation. These other adverse actions could include creating a hostile work environment, writing you an unfairly negative performance review, changing your work assignments or schedule without you requesting this change, demoting you, or denying you a raise or promotion when you would have received one.
The Four Categories of Wrongful Termination in Violation of Public Policy
Wrongful termination in violation of public policy covers a wide range of protected activities. In general, though, they fit into four categories:
- Activities protected by statute – This refers to protected activities covered under a specific law, such as filing a workers’ compensation claim pursuant to the Workers’ Compensation Act or taking an unpaid leave of absence due to illness or family caregiving obligations, pursuant to the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA).
- Refusing to engage in unlawful activity – This is when your employer instructs you to do something that you reasonably believe violates criminal laws or federal and state regulations, such as falsifying records, selling products that do not meet legal safety standards, or defrauding clients.
- Fulfilling a public obligation – The most common manifestation of this protected activity is when workers are absent from work to vote in elections.
- Whistleblower actions – This protected category includes complaints to the relevant authorities about misconduct that the employee has witnessed in the workplace. For example, it could include reporting a crime to law enforcement, notifying the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) about workplace safety hazards, or opening a discrimination complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) or the Montana Human Rights Bureau.
It is possible that several factors led to the termination of your employment, and your involvement in a protected activity was only one of them. If you are not sure whether wrongful termination in violation of public policy, as opposed to employment discrimination or breach of contract, for example, is the best way to frame your wrongful termination of employment claim, contact a Bozeman employment lawyer.
Your Rights if Your Employer Terminated Your Employment in Violation of Public Policy
If your employer terminated your employment because you engaged in a legally protected activity, then this counts as wrongful termination of employment in violation of public policy. You have the right to sue your employer and request compensation for the amount of money you lost because of losing your job. In the most severe cases, you might also be able to request non-economic damages to compensate for your emotional distress. As with many other types of civil lawsuits, wrongful termination lawsuits often result in a settlement that enables the parties to avoid going to trial.
Your wrongful termination claim might include discrimination in addition to retaliation. For example, if your employer fired you when you requested FMLA leave for the first 12 weeks after your baby’s birth, this counts as sex discrimination, but it is also wrongful termination in violation of public policy. Therefore, you should follow the procedures for employment discrimination lawsuits. This means getting authorization from the EEOC or Human Rights Bureau before you sue.
HKM for Wrongful Termination of Employment Claims
The Bozeman employment lawyers at HKM Employment Attorneys LLP can counsel you about filing a wrongful termination of employment in violation of public policy claim. Contact our lawyers in Bozeman, Montana, to set up a consultation.
