Job Discrimination: Constructive Discharge Can Be Grounds For A Lawsuit
Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession
December 1997
Quick Summary: A nurse can sue for constructive discharge if the nurse must resign to escape intolerable working conditions caused by illegal acts of discrimination.
It is unlawful discrimination for an employer to discharge an employee because of the employee’s race, national origin, gender, etc.
To claim constructive discharge, the employee must prove that the employer deliberately created intolerable working conditions with the intention of forcing the employee to quit.
However, the courts do not give the benefit of the doubt to an employee who is unreasonably sensitive to his or her working conditions. Constructive discharge occurs only when a reasonable employee would find the conditions intolerable.
An employee who is scrutinized and reprimanded more than others does not have unreasonable working conditions, just because the job is less enjoyable and the employee experiences added stress.
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT, MINNESOTA, 1997.According to the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, there was no question that the LPN who had filed charges of employment discrimination against her former employer, a nursing home, had resigned from her position rather than being terminated.
However, that was not the end of the court’s inquiry into whether this nurse had been a victim of illegal employment discrimination. The court drew guidance from case precedents set down by other Federal courts, the U.S. Supreme Court and state courts, which have said that "constructive discharge" can be the basis of a valid employment discrimination claim.
In general terms, if an employer makes an employee’s working conditions so intolerable that the employee is compelled to resign, and that is done for discriminatory reasons, the employer may be faced with a discrimination lawsuit, the same as if the employee were terminated for the same discriminatory reasons.
The nurse contended the nursing home treated male nurses more favorably, paying them better and allegedly allowing them to leave the premises on their meal breaks. In fact, the nursing home settled with her on this issue, paying her $20,000 as restitution for unequal pay, removing the gender discrimination issue from further consideration by the court.
The court, however, was not persuaded in this particular case that the employer’s ongoing close scrutiny of this nurse over medication errors and other lapses in professional judgment resulted from illegal discriminatory motivation or was an attempt to constructively discharge her by forcing her to quit. On the contrary, the employer’s efforts to straighten out the nurse’s clinical performance indicted a desire to keep her on staff despite certain deficiencies. French vs. Nursing Home, 973 F. Supp. 870 (D. Minn., 1997).