California Supreme Court Holds That Employees Not Personally Liable for Retaliation
Employers and managers received some welcome news yesterday when the California Supreme Court ruled in Jones v. The Lodge at Torrey Pines Partnership that supervising employees could not be held personally liable in cases alleging claims of retaliation.
In Jones, a jury returned a verdict against the employer and an individual defendant supervisor, finding both liable for retaliating against an employee who had made a sexual orientation discrimination complaint. In reversing the appellate court's decision affirming that verdict, the California Supreme Court found that the statutory language prohibiting retaliation did not plainly provide for personal liability on retaliation claims. Drawing an analogy to discrimination claims, which also do not provide for personal liability of individual employees, the Court stated that:
“All of these reasons for not imposing individual liability for discrimination – supervisors can avoid harassment but cannot avoid personnel decisions, it is incongruous to exempt small employers but to hold individual non-employers liable, sound policy favors avoiding conflicts of interest and the chilling of effective management, corporate decisions are often collective, and it is bad policy to subject supervisors to the threat of a lawsuit every time they make a personnel decision – apply equally to retaliation.”
Based upon these policy considerations, the ambiguous statutory language, and a review of legislative history, the Court held that there was no personal liability for retaliation claims.
In analyzing this decision, employers should be mindful that, although individual employees are not personally liability, employers are still liable for any unlawful retaliation. Please contact us directly if you have any questions regarding the Jones decision.