Often employees do not know about retaliation claims. Discrimination laws make it unlawful to retaliate against an employee for opposing any employment practice made unlawful by Title VII, or because the employee has made a charge, testified, assisted, or participated in any manner in an investigation, proceeding, or hearing under Title VII. Title VII makes it unlawful to discriminate against an individual on account of his or her race, religion, color, sex, or national origin. See this link for more. Most other employment discrimination statutes, like those prohibiting age and disability discrimination, also have anti-retaliation provisions. In a recent case, the Maryland federal court found that a former employee had presented sufficient evidence to go to trial on her retaliation claim. In the case, Margaret Templeton, sued her former employer for retaliation when her employer refused to rehire her on two occasions, a number of years after she had complained about sexual harassment by her immediate supervisor. In this case, the Maryland federal court found that there was sufficient evidence to be skeptical of the employer’s proffered reasons for failing to rehire Templeton. The court noted that the employer changed its reasons over time for its failure to rehire her. At first, a former manager testified that he opposed the rehiring because of “‘some of the issues as far as loan files were concerned’” ,however later he objected to her rehiring due to a lack of documentation about her production levels. The court concluded that the claimant should be allowed to have a jury decide whether or not she had been unlawfully retaliated against for complaining about sexual harassment when she had been employed by the defendant. This case is highlights that an employee has rights under discrimination laws to be protected from unlawful retaliation even if that employee has no underlying discrimination claim.
