Josh Goodbaum: Hi, Amanda.
Amanda DeMatteis: Hi, Josh. What are we gonna talk about today?
Goodbaum: I want to talk about an employee-client who comes to you. They’ve been terminated, they say, for violating a policy that their employer doesn’t actually have. So imagine, for example, that the employee says, “I was terminated; they told me it was because I was bullying somebody; but my employer doesn’t have an anti-bullying policy. There’s nothing that prohibits bullying. They terminated me for violating a policy that doesn’t exist. Can they do that?”
DeMatteis: Yes, they can, in fact. So, remember that the default in Connecticut is employment at will, which means your employer could end this employment relationship, or you could end this employment relationship, for any reason or no reason whatsoever any time you’d like, and that does extend to, “I’m saying that I’m terminating you for violating X policy, but that policy does not exist.”
Now, are there exceptions to that default rule, and can there potentially be a workaround if your employer is telling you that you’ve been separated on the basis of a policy that does not exist?
Yes, of course. If your employer is acting illegally or unlawfully, there is something we can do.
What we would really want to do as employment lawyers is take a look at the whole scope of the employment relationship at this time. Did you otherwise engage in any activity that is protected under the law? For instance, have you just come back from a medical leave? Are you pregnant? Have you been complaining about something unlawful or unethical that’s happening at work?
If any of these things, or a bunch of others, predate this false reason for this adverse employment action, this termination, then we might be able to infer that the real reason – not this fictitious one, but the real reason – is something illegal, therefore giving rise to legal claims.
So, Josh, the answer to your question, can the employer do this? Yes. But is that the end of our inquiry? No, it’s not.
We really want to get a sense of everything else that’s happening in the workplace at this time to understand whether or not that employee may have some legal rights against their employer for this termination, this adverse employment action.
Goodbaum: Great advice, Amanda. If you’re an at-will employee, you’re not entitled to be terminated only for a good reason. Your only entitlement is not to be terminated for an unlawful reason. And so if you are terminated for violating a policy of your employer, even if it’s a policy that doesn’t exist on paper anywhere, then you don’t have a claim unless you can point to some other unlawful reason that you were terminated.
Thanks for watching. We’ll see you next time.