New Jersey Employment Lawyer Blog

The Appellate Division of the Superior Court of New Jersey recently ruled that an employee who blows the whistle on illegal or unethical employer conduct does not qualify as a "whistleblower" if her part of her job duties is to monitor such conduct.

The case, White v. Starbucks Corp, et. al., involved a former Starbucks District Manager, Kari White, who started working for Starbucks in 2006. White claimed she was fired for whistleblowing about various workplace activities that violated the law and company policy. Some of these activities include reporting missing store merchandise, unsanitary conditions at the Newark branch, alcohol consumption by employees while on the job, after-hours sex parties, employees emailing pornographic images, and complaining about the Westfield branch’s tables and chairs not leaving enough space for a wheelchair. White alleged that Starbucks forced her to resign from her position in March 2007 after she complained about these activities. Starbucks argued that White was terminated due to her aggressive managerial style.

White sued Starbucks Corp. under CEPA, the law which prevents employers from taking retaliatory action against employees who report unethical workplace activities. CEPA serves two major public policy objectives: 1) protecting and encouraging employees to report illegal and unethical workplace activities and 2) discouraging public and private sector employees from engaging in such conduct.

The Court dismissed White’s CEPA claim by relying heavily on an earlier case which held that an employee may not bring a claim under CEPA if they are engaging in acts which are already a part of their job duties.

Here, White’s job duties as a District Manager required that she “regularly and customarily exercise discretion in managing the overall operation of the stores within her district including overseeing the district's store management workforce, making management staffing decisions, ensuring district-wide customer satisfaction and product quality, and managing safety and security within the district.” The Court stated that it was White’s job to communicate with her superiors about any violations occurring at the stores she oversaw, and ensure that these violations were addressed and corrected. Therefore, the Court concluded that CEPA is inapplicable in White’s case.

The New Jersey Supreme Court has been asked to review the Appellate Division’s decision. If the State Supreme Court is to further affirm the notion that employees cannot bring a CEPA claim if whistleblowing activities are already a part of their job duties, the policy implications can be far reaching and possibly even thwart the objectives of CEPA. Limiting the scope of CEPA as the Court has clearly done in White v. Starbucks Corp., et. al., does not serve as a deterrent against employers taking retaliatory action against employees trying to do the right thing in the workplace. Further, employers could strategically word job duties to include vague and broad language that would bar employees from later bringing a CEPA claim. We hope the NJ Supreme Court will overturn this decision and keep the policy objectives of CEPA intact.

The U.S. Supreme Court has issued a troubling decision which affirms the validity of a judicially-created exception to the nation’s employment discrimination laws. In upholding and expanding the so-called “ministerial exception,” the Court rendered an entire class of employees, i.e., ministers or other religious leaders, ineligible for protection from employment discrimination. Moreover, the Court broadly interpreted the term “minister” to include religious school teachers who are ordained in their faith but not working in the role of minister of a congregation.

The case, Hosanna-Tabor Church v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, was brought by a former employee of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, Cheryl Perich, who alleged she was fired from her teaching position by the Church because she had pursued an employment discrimination action against it based on disability. The Church admitted that it terminated Ms. Perich in retaliation for her filing a charge of discrimination. However, it sought sanctuary under a judicially-created exception to employment discrimination laws called the “ministerial exception.” As Chief Justice Roberts explained, this exception is grounded in the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause. According to the Court’s reasoning, the Constitution's guarantee of freedom to exercise the religion of one’s choice confers on religious organizations the right to choose their leaders in any manner they want -- even in a discriminatory manner.

In arguing against the ministerial exception, Ms. Perich cited an earlier case where members of a church were denied unemployment benefits after it was discovered that they were fired for using peyote as part of a religious sacrament. In that case, the court determined that the Free Exercise Clause had not been violated because the right to exercise religion does not relieve an individual of his or her obligation to follow valid and neutral laws of general applicability. The Court in Ms. Perich’s case distinguished the earlier case by stating that smoking peyote implicated government regulation of an outward act while Ms. Perich’s case implicated an internal Church decision that affected the faith and mission of the Church itself.

This decision is troubling for many reasons. First, the “ministerial exception” may be interpreted even more broadly in the future, as this Court applied the exception to teachers like Ms. Perich, who only devoted a small part of her day to religious duties. Second, the Court fumbled in distinguishing what constitutes an "outward act" as opposed to an internal decision. A church’s decision to fire an employee for a discriminatory reason could easily be interpreted as implicating government regulation of an outward act, since acts of discrimination affect not only the individual affected but the public interest as well. Likewise, an employee smoking peyote for sacramental purposes can be interpreted as an internal personal decision and a matter of personal faith.

Ultimately, this decision narrows the rights of a large class of employees who work for religious institutions. Employees who want to advance within a religious school or church and obtain status as a “leader” or “minister” now do so at their own peril. They may be discriminated against without any legal repercussion whatsoever, as their employer can simply claim that the decision to harass, demote, or terminate the employee was an “internal church decision” protected by the First Amendment.

A jury, sitting in Federal District Court in the Southern District of New York, awarded Freddrick MacMillan, an African-American employee who worked for Millennium Broadway Hotel in Manhattan, $1,000,000 in punitive damages and $125,000 in compensatory damages in a discrimination law suit. Mr. MacMillan, who has been an employee of Millennium for over two decades, sued the hotel in Federal District Court alleging that he was forced to work in a racially hostile work environment.
Mr. MacMillan alleged in his lawsuit that he was the only African-American employee working in the hotel’s engineering department. He further alleged that other mechanics as well as supervisors frequently used inappropriate racial terms in his presence in order to upset and harass him. Mr. MacMillan claimed that co-workers referred to him as “boy” and one of them suspended a lynched voodoo doll hanging from a noose in a supervisor’s office. The doll remained on a bulletin board in the supervisor’s office until a union representative intervened. Millennium failed to discipline anyone in the investigation that followed.
Under federal law, Mr. MacMillan was required to demonstrate that his workplace was permeated with discriminatory intimidation, ridicule, or insult that was sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of his employment, and create an abusive working environment.
The co-worker who displayed the voodoo doll and other co-workers who allegedly contributed to the hostile work environment have left the hotel since the law suit was filed. Mr. MacMillan has continued working as a mechanic for the engineering department at the Hotel.
The jury verdict in Mr. MacMillan’s favor and the subsequent award of compensatory and punitive damages comes as a caution to employers who fail to take proactive action in response to employee complaints regarding discriminatory harassment and hostile work environments. Not only is creating a hostile work environment in violation of federal law, but it can result in a significant monetary liability.

A Camden coffee shop owner was sued after six female employees alleged that he sexually harassed them in the workplace. The coffee shop, located in downtown Camden, is modestly called “City Coffee” but, interestingly, provides other services. City Coffee also brews up DNA testing and tax preparations, which the owner runs out of his office in the back of the store.
Former employees of City Coffee alleged that the owner lured or followed them into areas of the store that could not be seen in the store surveillance camera in order to make advances. The complaint further alleged that the owner created such an intolerable work environment that many female employees quit.

A settlement reached in the amount of $75,000 the night before trial is now being contested by the owner, who claims he never agreed to it and did not sign it. Recently, a Superior Court Judge ruled that the settlement is binding and enforceable, and the owner be required to comply. In addition to the $75,000, $15,000 of which will be distributed to the employees involved, the settlement also required that the coffee shop owner provide employee training on workplace discrimination and put in place store policies against workplace discrimination. The State Attorney General’s Office believes that the owner will be appealing the decision.

There are two important things to note from this story. The first is that although the owner argues that he never signed anything, agreements do not always have to be signed in order to be enforceable in New Jersey. Second, employers in New Jersey, no matter the size, must have anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policies and should provide training on these issues, for their own protection and for the protection of their employees.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Wal-Mart today in a massive class-action lawsuit brought by current and former female employees. The women claimed that Wal-Mart, the country's largest private employer, systematically discriminated against them on the basis of their gender by paying them less and promoting them less frequently than their male counterparts. As many as 1.5 million female employees would have been parties to the class action if it were allowed go forward.

The opinion, authored by Justice Antonin Scalia, found that the proposed class members lacked "commonality," i.e., that the 1.5 million potential plaintiffs each had different experiences at Wal-Mart that could not easily be tried in one case. Wal-Mart has approximately 3400 stores nationwide and thousands of male managers making personnel decisions. Justice Ruth Ginsburg filed a concurrence and dissent, taking issue with the majority's opinion regarding commonality. Justice Ginsburg opined that the plaintiffs showed enough commonality to deserve a remand back to the district court for further proceedings. She pointed to statistical evidence provided by the plaintiffs which showed discrimination towards women. For example, women fill 70% of the hourly jobs in the retailer’s stores but make up only 33% percent of management; the higher up in the organization, the lower the percentage of women; women working in the company’s stores are paid less than men in every region; and the salary gap widens over time even for men and women hired into the same jobs at the same time.

While employers will hail this decision as a victory, the celebration may be short-lived. 1.5 million women now have the right to file individual lawsuits against Wal-Mart all over the country. Alternatively, female employees can attempt to file class actions on a region-by-region or even store-by-store basis. Until Wal-Mart remedies what seems to be serious problems with its employment practices, it will continue to face legal action.

According to employees of an Illinois warehouse operated by Schenker Logistics, their company has not done enough to remove racist graffiti, including swastikas and the letters KKK, from the company's premises. The employees have now filed complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Said one employee, Angela McDonald, "I don't want to have go to work and see this person that's hateful." She previously complained to management about an employee that had a Confederate flag on his truck. The company has done nothing, she claims.

The lawyer for the employees said that "there is racist graffiti all over the break rooms and the washrooms and the company is doing nothing about it."

While a company cannot be expected to monitor its employees every moment while they are at work, employers have a responsibility to act promptly, decisively, and effectively when acts of harassment and discrimination occur. Not only should the company have removed the racist, hateful graffiti immediately, it should have instituted mandatory anti-harassment training for all its employees.

View more videos at: http://nbcchicago.com.

The Jersey City Parking Authority and two of its employees are being sued again for sexual harassment, bringing the total number of cases involving the same employee-defendants to three. Earlier this year, former JCPA employee Nancy Lopez settled her sexual harassment claim against the Authority, its Director of Enforcement, Fernando Picariello, and Enforcement Officer Raymond Manzo. The new lawsuits, filed by Yolanda Miranda, a former JCPA employee, and Rosalie Laureano, a current employee, allege that they were sexually harassed and suffered retaliation in connection with the Lopez lawsuit.

Miranda claims in her lawsuit that Manzo touched her breasts and buttocks, and attempted to assault her in her home. Laureano alleges in her lawsuit that after she participated in an internal investigation into Picariello's conduct, he changed her schedule to deprive her of income and engaged in "physical and verbal coercion, threats and intimidation, and micro-managing." She also claims that Picariello and Manzo made references to her buttocks and suggested in her presence that they would like to have sex with her.

In my experience, when there is this much smoke, there is usually fire. It's exceedingly rare for an employee to accuse her supervisors of sexual harassment. In these cases, three separate women all accuse the same men of the same types of illegal behavior. I don't think any rational jury would find that the Authority acted properly in these cases.

Last month, attorneys on behalf of a group of Indian workers asked for for class-action status in a federal lawsuit that describes the workers as victims of "human trafficking" and organized crime. According to the Houston Chronicle, a group of employers, immigration lawyers and labor recruiters based in India, New Orleans, Texas and Mississippi conspired to deceive and exploit workers in a multinational scam.

Skilled Indian shipbuilders were recruited to work in the U.S. with the promise of obtaining legal permanent residency -- green cards. However, when they arrived in the U.S., the shipbuilding company, Signal International, required them to live in pre-fab cabins at company-run "man camps" for which they were forced to pay "rent" of $1,050 a month. According to two of the workers, the man camps felt like "jail." Workers were allegedly subjected to routine searches (alcohol was prohibited), guests were turned away, and guards referred to them by number rather than by name.

In court documents, attorneys for Signal argued that the company was misled by labor recruiters and an immigration lawyer. Signal has allegedly demanded refunds and severed ties with one consulting firm after learning of recruiters' false promises and inflated visa charges. Other parties in the federal lawsuit — an Indian recruiter, a New Orleans immigration lawyer and others — also denied or deflected blame for the situation.

Here in central New Jersey, we have a large community of hard-working men and women from India and other Asian countries. Unfortunately, there are companies both here and abroad who take advantage of them. If you are an immigrant who believes that your rights are being violated at work, please seek out the counsel of an employment attorney who has experience handling immigration-related employment disputes.

For the first time ever, the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) issued a complaint that an employer engaged in unfair labor practices for firing an employee who made derogatory posts about her supervisor on Facebook, on her own computer during off-work hours.

The NLRB issued the complaint against American Medical Response of Connecticut, an ambulance company, for firing medical technician Dawnmarie Souza after she criticized her supervisor online. It also stated that the company’s blogging and internet posting policy in its employee handbook was too broad. The handbook stated that “[e]mployees are prohibited from making disparaging, discriminatory or defamatory comments when discussing the Company or the employee’s superior, co-workers and/or competitors.” The NLRB stated that fundamental labor laws allow an employee to criticize supervisors and talk with other employees.

The NLRB is an independent federal agency with authority over most private sector employers. Therefore, the outcome of this case could have significant implications for employment and privacy laws and employers should look to see if they need to amend their policies.

We would still caution employees to be careful about what they post on their Facebook and other social media sites. There have been several recent cases where employers have successfully asked a court to force employees to reveal what they have on their personal websites. This is an area of the law that is constantly changing so if you have any questions on whether you are in compliance, you should consult an employment attorney.

According to New Jersey Transit, the answer is yes. The public railroad agency recently terminated long-time employee Derek Fenton for burning pages of the Muslim holy book in front of the planned Muslim community center and mosque near Ground Zero on September 11, 2010. Mr. Fenton claimed to be inspired to stage his protest by Florida pastor Terry Jones, who had threatened to burn the Koran but then backed down. In a press release issued after the termination, New Jersey transit stated that "Mr. Fenton's public actions violated New Jersey Transit's code of ethics. . . . We concluded that Mr. Fenton violated his trust as a state employee and therefore [he] was dismissed."

From an employment law perspective, it's clear that an employer can fire an employee for any reason or no reason at all. This is the meaning of the term "at-will employment." Just as Mr. Fenton had a right to protest, New Jersey Transit had a right to terminate his employment at will. For this reason, New Jersey Transit has not violated New Jersey law by terminating Mr. Fenton.

The moral of this story is that employers can use your actions outside of work as a basis for terminating your employment. When you engage in an act of protest such as Derek Fenton's, you have to be prepared to suffer the consequences, which can include losing your job.

Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor has an even-handed record when it comes to discrimination lawsuits and employment cases, in particular. Since becoming a federal appellate judge in 1998, she has written several opinions and dissents which sided with persons alleging discrimination, including an African-American elementary school student who claimed his demotion from first grade to kindergarten was racially motivated, and a law school graduate who needed extra time to take the bar exam because of a reading and learning disability. In the realm of employment law, she has ruled in favor of a security guard who filed his case too late because of a medical condition, a female police office who alleged sexual harassment and retaliation, and a group of job applicants who were denied jobs because there were taking medication.

At the same time, however, Judge Sotomayor has issued a number of decisions which went against employees. Recently, she ruled against a group of New York City fire alarm inspectors who asserted that they should be compensated for all or part of their commuting time because they are required to carry inspection documents during their commutes. She also upheld the trial court's denial of an employee's request to enter an injunction against her employer, seeking to prohibit the employer from retaliating against her witnesses by firing or disciplining them. In another case, she ruled that a group of corrections officers had not satisfied their burden of proving a connection between their whistleblowing and their employer's decision to discipline them.

The media has unanimously decided that Judge Sotomayor is a "moderate." Her fellow judges on the Second Circuit and commentators appear to agree. After reviewing some of her court decisions myself, I also agree that Judge Sotomayor is a very middle of the road jurist, at least with respect to discrimination and employment cases. In my view, President Obama has made a very wise political appointment -- one that will put him in the history books for appointing the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice, and at the same time leaves little room for opposition from congressional Republicans.

A recent case from the New Jersey Superior Court should make any employee who has ever used a work computer to send or receive email from an attorney a little nervous. In Stengart v. Loving Care Ag. Inc., No. BER-L-858-08 (Feb. 5, 2009), the Court held that the attorney-client privilege did not apply to emails between an employee/plaintiff and her lawyer which were accessed on the employee's work computer -- despite the fact that the emails were accessed through a personal, password-protected email account. The Court thus permitted the company to use the employee's emails to and from her attorney to defend against her discrimination claims.

As reported by the law firm of Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney, the Court based its decision on the fact that the employer had a published electronic communication policy which "adequately warned employees that there [was] no reasonable expectation of privacy" with respect to any emails generated or viewed on company issued computers, and the fact that the employee was aware of the policy.

This decision reminds us that any time you contact your lawyer from your work computer, you run the risk of exposing the communication to your employer or other third parties. This situation is particularly dangerous for employees who are engaged in litigation with their current employers, although it applies to everyone. If you must communicate with your lawyer during the work day, the most prudent thing to do is to step outside the office and make a telephone call. Save the emails for when you get home from work.

In an age of increasing identity theft, the State of Connecticut has become the second state (after Michigan) to pass a law requiring that all businesses and their employees safeguard and protect the confidentiality of social security numbers. In signing the new bill into law, Governor M. Jodi Rell, said that “[i]n our fast-paced world, it takes only moments for someone to steal an identity and commit significant, long-lasting damage to a credit record." “This bill protects not just Social Security numbers, but any personal information," continued the Governor. "The law requires anyone possessing such information to safeguard it, along with the computer files and documents containing it, and specifically mandates that businesses that collect Social Security numbers develop a privacy protection policy."

The new law requires businesses to not only safeguard the personal information of their customers, but their employees as well. Although the law does not give individuals whose information is improperly divulged a right to file a lawsuit, it does provide for penalties and fines up to $500,000. A thoughtful description of the new law is set out in Daniel Schwartz's Connecticut Employment Law Blog.

Federal agencies and their employees, like IRS agents, have long been prohibited from disclosing taxpayer's financial information to third parties, pursuant to 26 U.S.C. 6103 and related laws and regulations. However, CT is only the second state to apply this prohibition to private citizens.

I recently counseled a client whose personal financial information was improperly disclosed by his employer to a group of his coworkers. While this client undoubtedly suffered embarassment and emotional injury due to his employer's thoughtless actions, I had to advise him that he did not have a case. Unfortunately, New Jersey does not have a similar statute and common law claims such as invasion of privacy did not apply to his situation.

I strongly feel that Connecticut and Michigan have done the right thing by passing legislation requiring employers and businesses to maintain confidentiality of financial information. I would like to see our New Jersey legislators follow suit.

NELA colleague Neil Mullin, Esq. won a significant victory for a gay couple who claimed they were harassed and discriminated against by firefighters in the Town of Secaucus, NJ. The plaintiffs alleged that they were subjected to anti-gay epithets and death threats after they asked the firefighters, whose station house was next to their residence, to quiet down. The plaintiffs alleged that the Town promoted two of the individuals involved, instead of disciplining them. The jury ruled in favor of the couple, concluding that Secaucus was responsible for the actions of the firefighters who perpetuated the attack, and that town officials had been indifferent to the harassment and discrimination the men experienced.

Mr. Mullin told The Hudson Reporter that he hoped the verdict "will signal to the Town of Secaucus the need to make some major changes. The mayor, the town attorney, and administrator failed to take any significant action to protect these men when their lives were in danger."

Having litigated against municipalities myself, I know that these cases are complicated and highly adversarial. My heartfelt congratulations to a terrific attorney and his team, and to the two gentlemen who prevailed in this case.

In my experience, most people who sue their employers for discrimination or retaliation are not looking for money. They are looking for justice. They want a wrong to be righted. They want an admission of guilt from the employer, an acknowledgment that it messed up. In short, they want an apology. Unfortunately, an apology is the one thing my clients never get. They might get some money. They might get some self-respect back and some vindication. But those three little words they want to hear so badly -- "I am sorry" -- will never, ever come. And that's a shame.

So-called "apology laws" are on the books in 34 states in the medical malpractice area. Under these laws, apologies made by health professionals to injured patients are not admissible in court. This encourages doctors, who are only human after all, to own up to their mistakes and apologize without having a plaintiff's attorney ram it down their throat at trial. The New York Times reported yesterday that hospitals which have adopted this approach have seen their medical malpractice lawsuits diminish substantially. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/us/18apology.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&hp

This approach would work quite well in employment discrimination and retaliation cases. I recently resolved a whistleblower case largely because the employer owned up and admitted it made a mistake. I was stunned. My client was satisfied. The case got settled. I know a lot of my cases would go the same way if the employers did the right thing and acknowledged their wrongdoing.