Page 5 - White Paper-Employment Termination
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Constructive Discharge and Hostile Work Environment
If an employer allows discriminatory harassment in the workplace that
effectively makes it untenable for a targeted employee to remain on the job, that
employee may resign and still bring the equivalent of a wrongful termination suit,
under the theory known as “constructive discharge.”
This concept is the source of widespread misunderstanding on the part of
both employees and employers that workplace bullying and a “hostile work
environment” are always unlawful. Not necessarily. This does not mean it is a
good idea for an employer to allow this kind of behavior in the workplace, but it is
only legally actionable in certain circumstances.
“Hostile work environment” is a term that only has legal significance in the
context of discrimination and harassment based on a person’s membership in a
protected class (see above). A classic example of an actionable hostile work
environment is one in which employees are permitted to display sexually explicit
images in their workspaces, or persistently tell off-color jokes or stories in the
presence of a female employee. The behavior, if directed specifically at the female
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