Retaliation against Federal Employee

CBOCS WEST, INC., PETITIONER v. HEDRICK G. HUMPHRIES

In 7-2 judgment delivered on May 27, 2008 by US Supreme Court ruled that Employees who complain of racial bias in the workplace and then face retaliation can sue under the Reconstruction-era Civil Rights Act of 1866 and amended by Congress in 1991, which was originally enacted as part of the oldest civil rights laws to ensure former slaves and other blacks had the same right to make contracts as whites.

In this case Hendrick Humphries, who had been an associate manager at a Cracker Barrel restaurant from 1999 to 2001 in Bradley, Illinois claimed that he had been retaliated against because he complained to the district manager that the store manager had discriminated against him and another black employee.

Writing for the majority, Justice Stephen Breyer, delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Stevens, Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, and Alito, JJ. joined relied on Rev. Stat. §1977, 42 U. S. C. §1981(a) wherein it was held that a longstanding civil rights law, first enacted just after the Civil War, provides that "a persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall have the same right in every State and Territory to make and enforce contracts . . . as is enjoyed by white citizens". They further observed that basic question before them was whether the provision encompasses a complaint of retaliation against a person who has complained about a violation of another person's contract-related "right." They finally concludeed that it does.

GOMEZ-PEREZ v. POTTER, POSTMASTER GENERAL

In another similar case, a 45-year-old postal worker Myrna Gomez-Perez, a U.S. Postal Service clerk in Puerto Rico filed suit claiming that her employer had violated the federal-sector provision of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA), when she was subjected to various forms of retaliation after she filed an age discrimination complaint after being denied a transfer to a job she had previously held.

In the majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito said the court followed the reasoning of two prior rulings and finally held that retaliation is covered by similar language in other anti-discrimination laws also.

Chief Justice John Roberts, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, dissented only to the extent that Congress in adopting the age bias law did not implicitly intend to create a judicial remedy for retaliation against federal employees when it expressly did so for private-sector workers.