Top 5 Minnesota Employment Law Cases in 2017

As 2017 comes to a close, let’s look back on five significant decisions from the Minnesota courts:

Court Delivered Wrong Analysis of Pregnancy Discrimination

We wrote this year in Employer Needn’t Be Angry About Pregnancy to Discriminate Against It about what the Minnesota Supreme Court views as the standard for showing illegal bias.

After receiving a job offer as an orthodontic assistant, the applicant informed the clinic that she was pregnant and would want 12 weeks off.  The clinic was happy for her but as a small employer (not subject to federal or state leave laws), they could not afford such a long leave and therefore rescinded the job offer.

The trial court dismissed the pregnancy discrimination lawsuit under the Minnesota Human Rights Act because the clinic did not demonstrate any actual hostility or animus about the pregnancy; they just were concerned about the impact of a long maternity leave on their business.

The Minnesota Supreme Court delivered bad news to the clinic in ruling that “a finding of animus, in the sense of dislike or hostility, is not necessary for a forbidden criteria to ‘actually motivate’ an employer’s decision.” As such, even though the clinic was not angry about the pregnancy, they were still motivated by it to take adverse action and they therefore discriminated against the applicant.

Retaliation Claims Are Now Easier to File – and Prove

In a piece entitled It Just Got MUCH Easier to Sue as a Whistleblower in Minnesota, we reported that the Minnesota Supreme Court removed a critical element of the good faith requirement for whistleblower claims.

An employee claimed that he was fired for objecting to and reporting the company’s plan to breach a contract with an outside party. He sued under the state whistleblower statute, which bars employers from terminating an employee who “in good faith” reports a violation or suspected violation of law to their employer or to a government agency or official.  Good faith for many years meant:

(1) The report was not knowingly false or made in reckless disregard for the truth; and

(2) The reporter acted with the “purpose of blowing the whistle, i.e., to expose an illegality.

The company defended on the grounds that the employee knew that company officials were aware of his concerns.  Therefore, he could not have been seeking to “expose an illegality” since the (alleged) illegality had already been made known to the company.

The Supreme Court disagreed, noting that the statute sought to codify this definition but only included the first of the two tests.  Therefore, the legislature must have intended that the definition of good faith is met whenever a claim is not false or made in reckless disregard of the truth.  In short, the employee’s motives are irrelevant.

Now, employees can proceed on these claims simply by showing they are not just making the whole thing up.  That is a pretty easy standard to meet.

Here’s a Tip For You – Wrongful Discharge Cases May Increase

Minnesota’s Fair Labor Standards Act (MFLSA) now permits a wrongful discharge claim even though the statute never actually says so.  How did that happen?

In Minnesota Tip Sharing Decision Sets the Table For More Wrongful Discharge Claims, we reported that a restaurant employee got fired for refusing to share tips with other employees. Minnesota’s tip sharing law says that restaurants cannot fire employees on that basis but the law does not say that the fired employees can sue for retaliation if they are in fact fired for that reason.

Nevertheless, the Minnesota Supreme Court allowed such a claim to proceed, finding that when the law was enacted to permit pursuit of “damages and other appropriate relief”, the Legislature expressly abrogated the “at will” doctrine in these instances and created a wrongful discharge claim for any termination accompanying an alleged violation of the MFLSA.  The Court never quite explained why the legislature would not have just created this right explicitly; they just assumed they did and left it at that.  As a result, every MFLSA claim involving a terminated employee is now likely to include a wrongful discharge component.

Minneapolis Sick Leave Ordinance is Alive and Well

In one of two momentous decisions on the rights of cities to legislate on employment issues, the Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled that Minneapolis (and by extension, St. Paul as well) may proceed with its new ordinance mandating sick leave for employees working in the city.

As explained in Appeals Court Upholds Minneapolis Sick Leave Ordinance, however, Minneapolis will continue to be prevented from enforcing its ordinance against employers who do not have a physical presence in the geographical boundaries of the city.

If you are located in Minneapolis or St. Paul, you should have revised your policies by now.

Minneapolis Employees Get a Raise

We just wrote in Judge says $15.00 Minimum Wage in Minneapolis Applies to All Employers Starting Jan. 1 that the new city minimum wage ordinance is set to go into effect on January 1 for pretty much every employer with workers inside the city limits.

The affirmation of the City’s right to regulate minimum wage closed out a big year in Minnesota employment law.

Bottom Line

Watch for our next post on the most significant federal court decisions from around the country that may affect Minnesota employers in 2018.

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