Abstract
Just as employers want to be able to hire on ability, they also want to be able to fire on performance. Yet there exist myriad laws that alter the at-will nature of the employment relationship and affect an employer’s capacity to make firing decisions. most notably, an employer cannot terminate an employee on account of their race, sex, religion, national origin, religion, age, or disability. Moreover, some states and localities impose additional restrictions, such as sexual orientation, gender identity, military status, and family status. Additionally, the common law of many states imposes additional restrictions on firing based on a given state’s public policy.
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References
McDonnell Douglas is one of the three methods available to aggrieved employees to establish discrimination. plaintiffs can also rely on direct evidence (a statement by a decision maker that the employee’s protected characteristic was the reason for the adverse action), or a mixed-motive (that the employer was motivated both an illegitimate purpose, even if it also had a legitimate reason for the adverse action). These tests, however, are largely academic and of interest to the practitioner proving, or disproving, a discrimination. What is important to the business, though, is how it can properly terminate an employee without stepping in a mess of liability, regardless of the legal test involved.
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More on these accommodation rules in Chapter 8.
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sixteen states and the district of Columbia have statutes that protect against both sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination in employment in the public and private sector: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington. The states that ban sexual orientation discrimination in employment by statute are California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, VerMont, Washington, and Wisconsin. Four states have laws prohibiting sexual orientation discrimination in public employment only: Indiana, Michigan, Montana, and Pennsylvania. Five states prohibit discrimination in public employment based on sexual orientation only: Alaska, Arizona, Missouri, Montana, and Ohio. Five states have an executive order, administrative order, or personnel regulation prohibiting discrimination in public Employment based on sexual orientation and gender identity: indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Three states prohibit discrimination based on gender identity in public employment only: Delaware, Maryland, and new york.
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Ohio is one of the exceptions. In Ohio, employees can proceed straight to court without first engaging in any agency proceedings. And, as if this circumvention of the administrative process is not bad enough, employees have up to six years to file a lawsuit for any prohibited discrimination except age, which carries a 180-day limit. Compare this six-year limit to the 300 days an employee has to file a charge with EEOC, and you can begin to understand the difficulties employers can face predicting and accounting for lawsuits by ex-employees.
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for example, under the rules of the state courts in which I primarily practice—Ohio—a defendant has 28 days to respond to a complaint. Ohio Civ. r. 12(A)(1).
28U.S.C.§ 1446(b)(1).
Case No. 08-4548, 2009 U.S. App. LEXIS 27377 (6th Cir. dec, 14, 2009).
Id. at * 16-18.
502 F.3d 496 (6th Cir. 2007).
Id. at 503 (emphasis added).
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© 2012 Jonathan T. Hyman
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Hyman, J.T. (2012). The Right to Fire on Performance. In: The Employer Bill of Rights. Apress, Berkeley, CA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4302-4552-0_3
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