Legal protections are murky for whistle-blowers

Eve Tahmincioglu • Profile • E-mail

Hedrick Humphries worked as a manager for a Cracker Barrel restaurant in Illinois and claims he was fired after reporting his boss’ racially offensive remarks and behavior to district managers.

Myrna Gomez-Perez, who had worked full-time as a postal worker Puerto Rico, filed an age discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and then, she claims, her managers reduced her hours as a result.

Both employees believe they were victims of retaliation, and they went ahead and sued their employers because of it.

While most of us may think federal employment laws protect us against retaliation in the workplace, it turns out they’re not a slam-dunk for workers.

This week, the Supreme Court will hear these two separate cases, and the high court’s decisions will likely impact many workers throughout the United States.

In all, the Supreme Court will be deciding on three retaliation cases this year, a significant number given that the court typically hears only about 75 cases each year, says Michael Gottesman, professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center.

“It’s significant they are taking so many,” says Gottesman, who moderated a panel discussion on the issue last week in Washington.

The third case involves Vicky Crawford, a former payroll coordinator for the metropolitan government of Nashville, Tenn. She claims she was fired because she cooperated with an internal company investigation of sexual harassment by another employee.

The cases are all quite different, but in all three the court must determine whether the claims of retaliation are indeed covered by existing labor laws.

In the case of Humphries, the question is whether he can legally claim retaliation under a particular anti-discrimination statute, one that has no limits on filing time limits or damages.

In the Gomez-Perez case, the question is whether government employees are protected from retaliation under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, just like their private-sector counterparts.

And in the Crawford case, the court will have to decide if she can file a retaliation suit under labor law, even though she did not herself file a complaint about the harassment but merely participated in an internal investigation.

Retaliation is a growing problem. According to the EEOC, retaliation claims jumped to 22,555 in 2006 from 11,096 in 1992.

“Moreover, retaliation charges have also consistently increased as a percentage of the EEOC's total private sector caseload each year," to 30 percent in 2006 from 15 percent in 1992, says David Grinberg, a spokesman for the EEOC.

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