Two employment law cases that were before the U.S. Supreme Court have recently been decided. Unfortunately, the high court’s decisions in both cases have the potential to significantly limit the rights of employees here in New Jersey and throughout the country.

The court’s decisions have effectively made it much more difficult for employees to hold their employers accountable for workplace discrimination, harassment and retaliation.

The first case involved a question about retaliation. The case began when a hospital revoked a job offer that had been extended to a doctor. The offer was apparently rescinded after the hospital learned from the man’s previous supervisor that he had filed a harassment complaint. After learning that the job offer was taken off the table, the man sued the medical center for retaliating against him.

He won that lawsuit, but the medical center appealed, arguing that in order to be held liable the jury needed to find that retaliation was the sole reason the job offer was revoked. This is called but-for causation, rather than mixed-motive causation–in mixed-motive causation, a jury would only need to believe retaliation was a factor that led to the negative employment action.

The Supreme Court ruled that employees do need to show but-for causation in retaliation complaints. This makes it more difficult to prove retaliation claims, because employers will always be able to argue that they had other proper motives.

In the second case, the court was asked to define the term “supervisor” as it relates to harassment cases. The definition is important because employers can be held liable when a supervisor is proven to have harassed a worker. When the harassment involves co-workers–instead of a supervisor and a lower employee–the employer can only be held liable if the harassment was reported and the employer failed to take action.

The court decided that in order to be called a supervisor, one must have the authority to hire and fire employees. In today’s modern workplace, many people who work as supervisors are not involved in hiring and firing, so this ruling may mean that employers will be able to skirt responsibility for harassment in some cases.

Both of these decisions were controversial, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has called for Congress to overturn the court’s decisions.

In the meantime, victims of workplace discrimination, harassment and retaliation in New Jersey should continue to seek legal counsel in order to learn whether it is possible to hold their employers responsible.

Source: Associated Press, “Supreme Court makes it harder to sue businesses for discrimination, retaliation,” June 24, 2013