Disclaimer: not a lawyer and I’m REALLY not your lawyer so take it for what it’s worth. I’ve worked in a hiring/firing & compliance role within a school district for a long time so I know my stuff (within reason).
I see a lot of people on this sub encouraging people to sue their employers for wrongful termination and it’s just not good advice nine times out of ten.
There is only one state in the US that is NOT an at will state so unless you’re in Montana, some variety of at will employment rules/laws/regulations apply.
Very very watered down summary is that it is VERY rare for you to be able to successful prove wrongful termination. You can legally be fired for anything that isn’t related to being a part of a protected class.
What does this mean? It means that you can get fired for almost anything (or nothing) and the company is legally in the clear.
You can legally be fired for showing up 5 minutes late even if it is just one time.
You can legally be fired for saying that you never really liked SpongeBob SquarePants.
You can be fired for wearing yellow.
You can be fired because the boss doesn’t like you.
You can be fired because it’s a Tuesday and your boss is cranky.
These are all stupid, and they suck, but they aren’t illegal.
Now to the illegal stuff.
You might have a case if you were fired for one of the following reasons and you can prove it at least somewhat convincingly.
Age (particularly over 40), race, national origin, religion, gender, disability, pregnancy, veteran status, sex (including sexual orientation) and genetic information (usually comes down to family/employee medical history).
So how this would work in practice is that Joe, a 55 year old veteran with a disability, CAN still be fired, but a smart HR team is going to make sure they demonstrate some cause other than his protected status.
I can fire Joe because he had a “bad attitude” with a client.
I can’t fire Joe because I don’t like the military or because he’s too old to “fit in” with the company culture.
Any HR team with any semblance of self preservation will never “no reason” terminate someone in a protected class. They might conveniently come up with a legal reason to fire someone in a protected class, but then it means you have to go to court and prove discrimination- which is VERY hard to do.
When have I seen a wrongful termination play out in the employees favor?
When HR wasn’t appropriately involved OR when HR is a moron or a nepotism hire.
Example: Ronda emailed her boss she was 20 weeks pregnant. She was always a model employee and had no negative evals. Her boss responded to the message that pregnant women never want to come back after maternity leave so it would be best if they just terminated employment now.
That is clear cut wrongful termination and it’s in writing. Easy task for a lawyer to prove.
Example of a time it likely isn’t wrongful termination: Ronda emailed her boss that she was pregnant. Her boss wrote back “That’s great news, I’m excited for you. We’ll talk about what your plan for maternity leave is closer to the date! Attached is our leave policy so you know what you’re entitled to!”
Two weeks later Ronda is part of a large layoff that impacted her whole department.
Unless she can prove the company has a history or pattern of hiding illegal terminations within layoffs OR that she was added to the “layoff list” as a result of pregnancy it likely won’t go anywhere.
Example of the same case being iffy: Same scenario above, but Ronda and two other pregnant women are laid off. Men who have less experience and less tenure in the same role are kept on.
This might be wrongful termination, but it’s harder to prove. The company can almost always hide these within “justifiable” firing reasons.
Long story short: it’s never a bad idea to run your case by a lawyer if you think you were let go illegally, but I hate to see people get their hopes up for a big payday that won’t come their way.
I was once told to fire a receptionist, in writing, because she was “too urban” for our community. Even with “someone” accidentally blind copying her on my reply to the email she was unsuccessful in her efforts to sue.
It’s not right – but it is how it works right now.
All of that being said, if you’re part of a union, you likely have a lot more support so always start there!