2020 Retaliation & Wrongful Discharge Update

Retaliations claims are one of the most common forms of employment litigation, whether as a standalone claim or when a substantive claim of harassment or discrimination fails.Though often used as a fallback claim, the scope of an employee’s protected conduct – whistleblower activity, requests for accommodation, and many other forms of activity – is not limitless. There are also complicated questions of what exactly constitutes an adverse action by an employer and the causal connection between the employee’s protected activity and the adverse action. This program will provide you with a practical review of recent case law and other developments impacting each of the elements of an actionable retaliation claim and best practices to avoid liability.

• Case law developments impacting elements of retaliation claims – protected conduct, adverse action, and causation
• Scope of “protected conduct,” including requests for reasonable accommodation under the ADA and FMLA
• What constitutes adverse action by the employer and timing of the adverse action
• Standards for establishing the causal link between protected conduct and adverse action
• Relationship among harassment, discrimination and ADA, and retaliation claim

Speaker: Ryan Derry, Paul Hastings, LLP, Los Angeles, CA

Note: This material qualifies for self-study credit only. Pursuant to Regulation 15.04.5, a lawyer may receive up to six hours of self-study credit in a reporting year. Self-study programs do not qualify for ethics, elimination of bias or Kansas credit.