southern california employment law

The Act California Fair Employment and Housing (FEHA) is the most important California law dealing with discrimination in employment and occupation. One of the provisions of the FEHA declares that it is an unlawful employment practice for": "Every employer" "or" person discharge, expel or otherwise discriminate against, because every person, the person has opposed any practices forbidden FEHA or because the person who has a complaint, testified, or at any proceeding under FEHA. "" This kind of unlawful employment practice is often referred to as retaliation.

In the case of the California Supreme Court, an employee under his supervision because FEHA for retaliation. The employee claimed that the simple language of the Statute, to describe the non-back, especially the use of the word "person", "forced to conclude that all persons in prohibited retaliation were personally liable not only the employer. However, the California Supreme Court ruled that non-employer individuals were not personally liable for their role in retaliation for which their employer is liable.

According to the court under the FEHA, the legislature would have the word "person" for reasons that are not necessarily associated with the request, the personal liability. Therefore, the Supreme Court analyzed the prohibition against retaliation in the same manner as he analyzes the provisions of the FEHA, which prohibits discrimination in employment. In previous decisions, the Supreme Court has ruled that the individual managers and supervisors are not personally liable for unlawful discrimination by their employer.

Some of the reasons that the fact that supervisors, through their own actions could avoid unlawful harassment. Moreover, the language of FEHA makes it clear that individual managers or supervisors can be liable for unlawful harassment, including sexual harassment. In contrast, the manager or supervisor not avoid personnel decisions of their employers, which could lead to allegations of unlawful retaliation. The Court noted that the employment of the company were often collective, and thus not the result of a decision by a manager or supervisor. Thus, the Court concluded that it was bad for the supervisors to the threat posed by each time, if they have a personnel decision.

Russell J. Thomas, Jr.
Attorney at Law
THOMAS & ASSOCIATES
4121 Westerly Place, Suite 101
Newport Beach, California 92660
Tel: (949) 752-0101
Fax: (949) 257-4756
E-mail: rthomas@rjtlawfirm.com
Web: http://www.rjtlawfirm.com

J.D., Harvard Law School, 1967

Specializing in employment law and litigation;
Offices in Southern California (Los Angeles and Orange County)