Legal Advocacy
U.S. Supreme Court Upholds Anti-Retaliation Law
U.S. Supreme Court Protects Workers from Retaliation
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on a vote of 9-0 that an employee is protected by the anti-retaliation provisions in federal work place civil rights laws regardless of whether he or she first filed an EEOC complaint. That is the result urged by the brief joined by AARP in this dispute.
Background
Vicky Crawford was fired after a successful thirty-year career with the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County, Tennessee (“Metro”) after answering her employer’s questions about sexual harassment by a senior manager. During an internal investigation, she and three other female employees had alleged that the employee relations director for the Metro School District, where they worked, had engaged in extremely offensive conduct and language. The report of the investigation concluded that the director had probably behaved inappropriately to some extent, but that no punishment was warranted. Within a few months, however, Crawford and the other three female employees who had reported the harassing behavior when questioned during the investigation were fired.
In addition to prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, Title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 also prohibits employers from retaliating against employees who “oppose” unlawful practices or “participate” in investigations by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency with oversight over work place civil rights complaints. The anti-retaliation provision is an especially important part of the law because studies show that harassment – particularly, as in this case, sexual harassment – goes unreported in a large number of cases because employees fear reprisals if they tell the truth.
In this case, Crawford’s employer argued that it was not liable under either the opposition or participation clause of the anti-retaliation provision. The City and County government argued first that since at the time Crawford and her coworkers were questioned during the internal investigation none of them had filed a charge of sex discrimination with the EEOC, it was not liable under the participation clause. Second, the government argued that answering questions during an internal investigation was not the kind of active “opposition” Congress had in mind when it enacted the anti-retaliation provision. The lower court agreed with the government and dismissed Crawford’s case, but the Supreme Court reversed that decision.
AARP’s brief
AARP joined a “friend of the court” brief filed by the National Women’s Law Center, urging the court to rule that the anti-retaliation provision protects a sexual harassment complainant even if she has not filed a charge with the EEOC. The brief outlined the numerous studies that show that sexual harassment is pervasive, damaging, and enormously underreported. The brief also noted that the federal antidiscrimination laws are designed to promote vigorous internal investigations in an effort to encourage employers to forcefully and rapidly deal with civil rights abuses. These goals would be thwarted if employers could retaliate against employees who had not yet filed EEOC charges.
The Supreme Court held that Crawford’s participation in the internal investigation was sufficient “opposition” to trigger the protection against retaliation: “If it were clear law that an employee who reported discrimination in answering an employer’s questions could be penalized with no remedy, prudent employees would have a good reason to keep quiet about [civil rights] offenses against themselves or against others,” the Court ruled. “The [lower] court’s rule would thus create a real dilemma for any knowledgeable employee in a hostile work environment.”
What’s at stake
The Court’s ruling is important to AARP’s membership because the anti-retaliation provision of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act and Americans with Disability Act are almost identical to that of Title VII.
Laws are meaningless if people are afraid to enforce their rights, and in the case of harassment complaints, there are so many reasons not to report misconduct (embarrassment, fear of being seen as a complainer, etc.) that it is critically important that courts vigorously enforce anti-retaliation laws. In its unanimous decision in Crawford v. Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County, TN, the Supreme Court acknowledged that in order to fulfill Congress’ purpose in enacting workplace civil rights laws, the protection against retaliation must be as extensive as the prohibitions of the underlying discrimination.
Contact person:
Tom Osborne
tosborne@aarp.org
(202) 434-2060
February 6, 2009