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Originally Posted by Manx
Yes I have heard of "at will" employment. But at will employment was significantly weakened in the 1980's. The result is essentialy what you see here in this article - an employer can fire anyone at anytime for any reason - but they then open themselves up to an easy lawsuit where they will have to defend the reasoning for the termination. In other words, very few people will be fired for what would commonly be considered no reason at all. In most terminations, documentary evidence is used for any potential need for defense.
An employer can be sued by anyone. If they can't explain why they fired someone, the employer is almost certainly going to lose the lawsuit. It may not be illegal, but there is the potential for civil penalties.
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I don't know where you got your J.D. from (or if you even have one), but it's obvious from this post that you are not a practicing attorney in an "at-will" state in the US. An employer can indeed be sued by anyone....ANYONE can be sued by anyone. Hell, I can sue an inanimate object if I want to. The Government does it all the time. That doesn't mean that the suit will be successful. In an "at will" state, the employer doesn't NEED to give a reason, because the employee is an "at will" employee. Now if some other statute is involved, like if it's a Title 7 scenario, that's different, but in this case, the woman was NOT fired for being a woman, she was fired for opening her mouth in a manner that irritated her employer's customer base. Gender, race, ethnicity, et cetera had nothing to do with it. In an "at will" situation, the employer can decide that they don't like the employee's haircut or hair color or bumper sticker or whatever and fire them without effective recourse, unless it was done in violation of a statute like Title 7. Yes, the employee can sue them, but the odds of the suit getting past a motion for dismissal are beyond slim, and depending on where the case is heard, F.R.C.P. Rule 11 sanctions or their local equivalent may be asked for.
You say "It may not be illegal, but there is the potential for civil penalties." If it's not illegal, there can BE no civil penalties. That's what civil penalties are for...to redress and compensate for illegal and/or tortious acts. If it's not illegal, you can't generally recover damages. For example, if you're hurt in a car accident, you can recover damages because it's illegal and tortious to hit and injure another person. It's not illegal to fire somebody in an "at will" state because they pissed your customers off, so damages are NOT recoverable.
There's more to the law than you will learn watching "Law & Order" reruns.
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Just replace "black man" with "dissenting woman" and tell me what makes this case any different.
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So, it's illegal to fire black people, period? Fascinating, but incorrect. It's illegal under Title 7 to fire black people BECAUSE THEY ARE BLACK. Any non-Title 7 situation/screwup on the part of the black employee is fair game, as long as it's not based upon race, gender, ethnicity, religion, et cetera. I've seen NOTHING to indicate that the woman in question was fired for being FEMALE....she was fired for her actions which irritated the bank's clientele. Those actions had nothing to do with her race or gender.
You can't fire somebody because they are black, or female, or Catholic, or from Zimbabwe. You CAN fire them for being an asshole and pissing off your clients, even if it's done away from the office, just as you can fire them for being charged with a DUI.