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February 11‚ 2011
Two Recent Cases Expand the Scope of Potential
Discrimination/Retaliation Claims Based on an Employee’s Relationship with
Others
By James M. Nicholas, Esq.
Two recent rulings—one by the U.S. Supreme Court and one by
the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD)—have greatly
expanded the scope of potential liability under federal and Massachusetts
state antidiscrimination laws.
On January 24th, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Thompson
v. North American Stainless (Thompson), holding that an employer
may violate Title VII by retaliating against an employee who is related to
a worker engaged in conduct protected by Title VII—even if the employee
himself neither raised a claim of discrimination nor engaged in any
protected conduct.
In Thompson, both the plaintiff and his fiancée worked
for the defendant, North American Stainless. Three weeks after the
plaintiff’s fiancée filed a sex discrimination claim against the employer,
the plaintiff was fired. The plaintiff was not involved in the filing of
his fiancée’s discrimination claim and was not otherwise involved in the
events giving rise to the claim or the internal investigation that
followed. Nonetheless, he filed suit against the employer alleging that the
employer fired him as retaliation against his fiancée for the complaints
she had made.
In an 8–0 decision, the Supreme Court found that Title VII’s
antiretaliation provisions prohibit employers from any conduct that might
dissuade a reasonable worker from making or supporting a charge of
discrimination, including conduct that impacts a third party. Based only on
the plaintiff’s relationship to the complainant, the Court concluded that a
reasonable worker might be dissuaded from engaging in protected conduct
(i.e., complaining about discriminatory conduct) if he knew his fiancée
would be fired as a result.
The Court, therefore, held that the plaintiff could pursue
his claim that the retaliation against him was based on protected conduct
engaged in by his fiancée. The Court’s holding, therefore, means that
employers are now exposed to a new type of Title VII retaliation claim that
can be brought by an employee who has not engaged in any protected
activity, but is related to someone who has.
Similarly, MCAD recently ruled in Grzych v. American
Reclamation Corp., et al. (Grzych), that racist comments about a
white employee’s relationship with a member of a protected class is
sufficient to confer standing to bring a racial harassment suit under
M.G.L. c. 151B.
In Grzych, a white employee sued his former employer
for racial harassment, based on certain racially derogatory statements made
by the company’s owner regarding the employee’s relationship with a black
woman of Jamaican descent. Because the owner repeatedly made racist
comments to the employee regarding this relationship, MCAD found that the
employee had standing to sue, based on his association with a member of a
protected class.
The company’s owner, who refused to testify at MCAD, appeared
to take the position that he could not be held liable for racial harassment
because both he and the complainant were white. MCAD disagreed and awarded
$50,000 in emotional distress damages and levied a statutory maximum
$10,000 civil penalty, holding the company and the owner jointly and
severally liable for the full damage award and civil fine.
While both of these cases represent a significant expansion
of the types of employees that are entitled to protection under federal and
Massachusetts antidiscrimination laws, neither the Supreme Court nor MCAD
specifically identified the specific class of relationships or individuals
for which the theory of relational discrimination/retaliation would be
cognizable. Accordingly, the precise lines defining the expansion of
liability contemplated by Thompson and Grzych will likely be
drawn in future cases.
Nevertheless, these decisions highlight our courts’ new
willingness to interpret antidiscrimination laws broadly—even by expanding
protection to individuals who seemingly are not in a protected class under
such laws—in order to further the goal of eliminating unlawful discrimination
and harassment in the workplace.
These decisions underscore the fundamental precept that
employers should in all cases be able to articulate legitimate,
nondiscriminatory and nonretaliatory reasons for their actions, and further
underscore the importance of consulting with counsel where an employment
action could be construed as violative of applicable antidiscrimination
laws.
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