If you re mad about a discrimination charge, vent only at your lawyer. Outrageous statements that you make to your lawyer when you're mad are completely confidential. The work version of road rage directed against discrimination plaintiffs looks ugly to a jury, and can be far more costly than an hour of berating your lawyer. Don t always be mad about discrimination complaints by employees. Sometimes the person with the complaint is right, and their feedback gives you a chance to get rid of a problem policy or person.
Retaliation is illegal even if the discrimination complaint turns out to be wrong.
The hottest legal battles over retaliation rage over what kind of adverse acts are illegal, and the answers are not always so obvious. It took a full Supreme Court decision in 1997 to make clear that an employer cannot give a bad reference to retaliate against a plaintiff with a discrimination complaint. And scores of courts continue to wrestle with the almost metaphysical distinctions of what constitutes an adverse employment action, often rejecting real hurts and slights that fall short of material or ultimate employment actions like firings, promotions or raises. So real life work slights like bruised egos, vindictive raised eyebrows, dirty looks and lowered voices may not be enough to violate the law. An appeals court recently held that an airline employee suffered no adverse employment action when her employer allegedly retaliated against her by changing her work hours, reprimanding her for a dress code violation, reassigning her to another work station, admonishing her for liberally giving frequent flyer miles to customers and removing 300 complimentary letters and recommendations from her personnel file.