Pushing back against wrongful termination due to retaliation

By Thomas Ricotta on April 11th, 2014 in Wrongful Termination

We will finish our two-part post on age discrimination next week. For this week’s second post, we will take note of a wrongful-termination case from the Bronx that is breaking news today.

The case involves a public school teacher with six years of experience who alleges that she was fired for refusing sexual offers from a tenured teacher.

The case is a vivid reminder of the different types of settings in which wrongful termination can occur.

As we discussed in our March 26 post, New York has a very specific set of legal protections for public school teachers. These protections are known as Labor Law 240.

To be sure, the teacher in the case that is in the news today was not yet tenured. But in court papers filed today in Manhattan, she contends that her supervisor retaliated against her for refusing his sexual advances.

This retaliation, the 30-year-old fired teacher asserts, involved falsely telling school administrators that the young woman had been having an improper relationship with a student-mentee.

The case involves some unusual sexual dynamics. The sexual advances that were rejected were allegedly for a three-way sexual encounter between the supervisor, the teacher who says she was retaliated against, and the supervisor’s boyfriend. For a press account, click here.

Our point in this post goes far beyond the specific details of the case, however, to the overriding issue of protections against wrongful termination. They do exist, even in a work culture that often seems cutthroat and cruel.

And protection against improper retaliation by an employer is one of those protections.

For information about our practice, please visit our page on wrongful termination.