What Constitutes Retaliation?
In order for conduct to constitute retaliation, it must result in at least some harm to the protected employee, however slight. Not surprisingly, different courts have different standards of “harm” to which the conduct must rise to constitute retaliation sufficient to support a lawsuit. Courts have held the following employment actions and workplace conduct sufficiently harmful to the protected employee to allow that employee to pursue a retaliation lawsuit: • failure to promote; • refusal to consider paying additional severance pay after the employee’s position was eliminated; • demotion with no decrease in pay; • suspension without pay, even though the lost pay was subsequently reimbursed (loss of use of the funds for the time they were unpaid); • lateral transfer to a different position with different duties; • co-worker harassment including manure in employee’s parking space, hair in her food, a rubber band shot at her, and scratches on her car where the employer did nothing to add
