US SUPREME COURT EXPANDS FEDERAL RACE RETALIATION CLAIMS
Employers now have two more good reasons to carefully document the reasons for firing any employee who complains about race discrimination than they did on Monday: uncapped compensatory and punitive damages and a four year statute of limitations. That happened when the U.S. Supreme Court filed an opinion involving Cracker Barrel and one of its former associate managers on Tuesday. The opinion filed yesterday confirms that an old federal statute which grants persons of all races the same rights to make and enforce contracts, 42 U.S.C. §1981, covers claims of race retaliation.

The former associate manager had filed a lawsuit against Cracker Barrel, claiming that he was fired after complaining about racial discrimination a few days before, not for leaving the store he was supposed to close open all night right before he was fired. The manager’s race retaliation claims under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act -- which caps claims for compensatory and punitive damages (at $50,000 for employers with less than 101 employees, for example), required employees to file a charge at the EEOC within 300 days and imposes with several other requirements -- were dismissed.

But the Supreme Court decided that the manager’s race retaliation claim against Cracker Barrel could proceed under Section 1981 without complying with any of these Title VII requirements and sent his case back to federal district court for jury trial. Although that decision made uncapped compensatory and punitive damages available for race retaliation claims against other employers under federal law, there are already no caps under Hawaii state law.

What is more important about the Cracker Barrel opinion here is that the four year statute of limitations under Section 1981 now clearly applies to race retaliation claims filed under federal law. Four years is obviously much longer than the 300 or 180 days that employees have to file the same race retaliation claims with the EEOC or HCRC, making careful documentation an even more important precaution against memories fading or witnesses leaving than it has been in the past. For more information about this decision, please contact your TK attorney.