Various federal statutes contain whistleblower provisions that protect employees who raise or report concerns that range from workplace safety, securities laws violation, or false claims submitted to the federal government. Different activities are protected depending on the statute at issue. Generally, retaliation protection kicks in if the employee reports conduct that he or she reasonably
The Door Gets a Little Wider: D.C. Circuit Rules Employee-Plaintiff Can Get Comparator Discovery to Prevent Dismissal of Case
If your employee sues you for discrimination, they don’t get to look at how the decision-makers treated everyone else, do they? Well, in Cruz vs. US Homeland Security, the D.C. Court of Appeals says yes they do. Although the district court granted summary judgment and did not let the plaintiff take discovery on how
For Employers in the #MeToo Era: It’s Not the Harassment Claim, It’s the Retaliation Claim that Gets You
The era of #MeToo has caused employers to hyper-focus on harassment claims. They have fine-tuned their policies, investigated claims more carefully, and acted swiftly and sometimes even in a draconian fashion upon finding any level of harassment. In most situations, these actions can effectively eliminate an employee’s viable claims of harassment. We are seeing this