When Is a Firing Considered a Wrongful Termination?

Employers need to make many important decisions regularly. For instance, employment decisions can involve hiring additional employees, firing employees, laying people off, promotions, demotions, transfers and other decisions.

Most of the time, these employment decisions are made based on the business needs at the time. The employment decisions may not always seem fair to the employee or proper for the needs of the company, but for the most part, employers are allowed to make whatever decisions they want to make.

However, some reasons for making these decisions are more than just not fair. Sometimes they are illegal and, as such, the employee may have a wrongful termination claim.

These illegal reasons include decisions made because the employer did not like people of a certain race, gender or gender identity, a certain religion, or a certain nationality. Likewise, the employer may believe that people of a certain age or have disabilities will not be able to perform the job tasks.

It could also be because the employer is retaliating against the employee for reporting a crime or participating in an investigation. Other illegal reasons could be because the firing violated an employment contract or a collective bargaining agreement.

There are many different employers in California and each one makes their employment decisions based on the type of business they run. However, every employer must follow the law when hiring and firing employees. If they are discriminating against employees, retaliating against them or violating contracts, the employer could be required to compensate the employee for the damages they cause. Experienced attorneys understand when a firing may violate the law.