Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, January 24, 1995 TAG: 9501250037
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Employers can be held liable for illegally firing someone even if they later found a lawful reason to justify the dismissal, the Supreme Court ruled today.
However, the court also barred reinstatement of such employees later found to have committed wrongdoing and limited the back pay they could be awarded.
The unanimous ruling reinstated a Tennessee woman's age-bias lawsuit against her former employer. But the decision also is expected to apply to other allegations of job discrimination, including those based on race, sex and religion.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the court that the Age Discrimination in Employment Act aims to deter age bias on the job and compensate employees who suffer such discrimination.
``It would not accord with this scheme if after-acquired evidence of wrongdoing that would have resulted in termination operates, in every instance, to bar all relief for an earlier violation of the act,'' Kennedy said.
``That does not mean, however, the employee's own misconduct is irrelevant to all the remedies otherwise available under the statute,'' Kennedy wrote.
The court barred reinstatement of employees who win job-bias lawsuits in which the employer later found evidence of employee wrongdoing that would have been a firing offense.
``It would be both inequitable and pointless to order the reinstatement of someone the employer would have terminated, and will terminate, in any event and upon lawful grounds,'' Kennedy said.
Such employees also can be granted back pay generally from the date they were illegally fired until the time the evidence of wrongdoing was discovered, Kennedy said. The back pay can be adjusted in special circumstances, he said.
A federal judge and appeals court had barred Christine McKennon from pursuing her age-discrimination lawsuit against the Nashville Banner Publishing Co.
McKennon sued the Nashville newspaper company after she was fired in 1990 after 39 years on the job. She was told she was fired as part of a staff reduction.
But McKennon admitted during pretrial proceedings that she had taken confidential company documents home. She said she did so because she feared losing her job.
Company officials asked a federal judge to throw out McKennon's lawsuit, saying that taking the documents was a firing offense.
A federal judge dismissed the age-discrimination lawsuit, saying such ``after-acquired evidence'' of employee wrongdoing freed the Banner from liability even if the actual firing was illegal. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed.
Groups that supported McKennon's appeal contended such a rule would dramatically weaken anti-discrimination laws by allowing employers to fire illegally as long as they later found some evidence of employee misconduct.
McKennon's lawyers said evidence of employee wrongdoing could be used to reduce the damages awarded to an illegally fired worker, but should not be used to throw out the job-bias lawsuit altogether.
Monday, the Supreme Court agreed.
Barring all back pay ``would undermine the ADEA's objective of forcing employers to consider and examine their motivations, and of penalizing them for employment decisions that spring from age discrimination,'' Kennedy wrote.
When employers want to rely on after-acquired evidence of employee wrongdoing, they must establish that the wrongdoing was severe enough to have been a firing offense, Kennedy added.
by CNB