« Spence: I Am Famous Because I Am Selfish |
Main
| Minow Named Dean of Harvard Law »
Your Fiancée Can Get You Fired
Your employer cannot fire you because you pursue your rights under Title VII. That is unlawful retaliation. But can you get fired because someone close to you -- to wit, your fiancée -- filed a Title VII claim? That is the unique issue decided this week by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Thompson v. North American Stainless.
The short answer, as decided by the court, is that Title VII does not protect the person who did not directly engage in protected activity. But as Ross Runkel recounts at LawMemo Employment Law Blog, it took a panel of 16 circuit judges to come up with that short answer, and they split 10 to 6, with three different dissenting opinions filed.
The plaintiff, Eric Thompson, claimed he was fired in retaliation for his fiancée's discrimination charge. Thompson met the woman, Miriam Regalado, at work in 2000. In 2002, Regalado filed a charge with the EEOC alleging that she was discriminated against because of her gender. Three weeks after the employer received notice of the charge, it fired Thompson.
The issue for the 6th Circuit was whether Title VII created a cause of action for third-party retaliation. Runkel explains how the court came down:
Because Thompson did not allege he himself engaged in any statutorily protected activity (i.e., did not oppose an unlawful employment practice, make a charge, testify, assist, or participate in an investigation), the court found by the plain language of the statute that Thompson was not included in the class of persons for whom Congress created a retaliation cause of action. The 3rd, 5th, and 8th circuits agreed. The court distinguished the recent Supreme Court's decision in Crawford v. Metro Gov't of Nashville and Davidson County, Tenn., 129 SCt 846 (2009), (which abrogated the 6th Circuit's view that the opposition clause required active, consistent behavior), by stating that Crawford involved involuntary testimony while Thompson did not engage in any protected activity.
The dissent focused on the anti-retaliation law's prohibition of discrimination against anyone who "has opposed" an unlawful employment practice. "Oppose" is a broad word that could arguably have encompassed the plaintiff's actions in this case, the dissent argued.
Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on June 11, 2009 at 12:09 PM | Permalink
| Comments (1)