Court Opinion

ID: 9627674
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 08:50:14.506989+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:06:48.581655
License: Public Domain

GOLDEN, Justice,
specially concurring.
Because there is a distinction between a public policy and the laws or regulations *642that reflect that policy, I specially concur on the question whether a public policy exception applies.
I cannot agree that the firing of employees for refusing to perform acts counter to a public policy does not implicate public policy concerns where regulations governing the industry authorize at-will employment. The parameters of public policies are not set by industry regulations. This approach puts the caboose before the engine. The regulations are evidence of the public policy, in this instance maintaining a stable lending industry by requiring sound lending practices. But the regulations are not, and do not somehow become, the policy. They are simply an administrative reflection of it.
Here, the underlying social policy is maintenance of a sound lending industry, not maintenance of a sound lending industry with at-will employment. Retaliatory discharge for refusing to make bad loans would violate that well-established public policy and satisfy the first factor required to invoke the public policy exception. By any line of reasoning, permitting at-will employment regulations to automatically negate the exception renders it meaningless in these circumstances.
However, I concur in the result because Dynan’s circumstances will not satisfy the second required factor, that there be no remedy to protect the interest of the aggrieved employee or society. Allen v. Safeway Stores, Inc., 699 P.2d 277, 284 (Wyo. 1985). While Dynan has no personal remedy, federal laws and regulations do protect society’s interests by providing for regulatory scrutiny of lending practices. See U.S.C. § 1464(d) (1982).
This is where Dynan’s situation differs from that of the school counselor in Leonard v. Converse County School District No. 2, 788 P.2d 1119 (Wyo.1990). In that case I said in dissent that the public policy of combatting child abuse would be thwarted by penalizing teachers who performed their statutory duty to report and assist in investigation of suspected child abuse. If Leonard’s contract was not renewed because she performed a statutory duty, then not only was Leonard herself treated unfairly, but society’s interest in protecting children from abuse was compromised. In this case it is not necessary that a lending industry employee act in a similarly unfettered manner, not because there was no violation of public policy, but because the public interest is otherwise adequately protected.
When deciding whether the public policy exception may apply we must keep our focus on the ball, which is the social goal itself, and not the regulations developed to further it. If employees are fired for acts consistent with that goal, public policy may be violated. The key question then becomes, does the individual or society have another way to vindicate the public policy? Here, the answer is yes.