The Court agreed with the NLRB in their assertion that the company had violated the National Labor Relations Act because the employee had talked to other employees about the policy and gathered evidence in support of her attempt to change the enforcement of the policy.  Thus the employee was participating in protected concerted activity in an attempt to achieve equal enforcement of the policy.  Equal enforcement of this policy would benefit all employees and the employee actively pursued coworkers support and help in changing the policy.  The Court thus reached the common-sense conclusion that the employee’s actions did meet the standard in the NLRA for protected concerted activity.

The plaintiff, an employee at Saint-Gobain, complained verbally several times about the placement of the time clock at Saint-Gobain being unlawful.  The time clock was placed beyond the area where workers were required to dress in protective clothing thus they were not paid for the time they donned and doffed their protective work gear.  A lower court ruled in a related case that the placement of the time clock was indeed a violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act.  In this case, the Court considered the use of the phrase “filed any complaint” and whether it allowed for a complaint about a violation to be filed orally or if it strictly limited complaints to be filed in writing.  Justice Breyer thoroughly defined the word “file” and “filed” only to conclude that what really mattered was the spirit of the text.  Breyer found that the intended purpose of the FLSA was to protect employees many of which, at the time the law was written, were illiterate and incapable of filing complaints in writing.  The Court concluded that employees may file complaints orally if the complaint is “sufficiently clear and detailed [enough] for a reasonable employer to understand it.”  The Court, however, did not address an equally important issue about whether a complaint must be filed with a government agency, not simply an employer, to fall within the standards of the FLSA anti-retaliation provision.

This case is a partial win for employees, granting them further protection against employment discrimination under the FLSA.  (More coverage here.)

UPDATE: Jonathan Harkavy’s commentary on this case can be found here from his overview of the Supreme Court’s employment law decisions during their 2010 session.

In this case, a police sergeant filed a USERRA complaint about service-based discrimination and was subsequently denied promotions that he applied for.  While the Fourth Circuit agreed there was not enough evidence to substantiate the initial USERRA complaint, the plaintiff had produced strong evidence of the subsequent retaliation by his employer.   Thus, summary judgment was partially reversed, allowing the retaliation claim to proceed to trial.

And, in other interesting EEOC news, the EEOC recently brought a lawsuit against Kaplan Higher Education Corporation, accusing it of discriminating against black job applicants through the way it uses credit histories in its hiring process.  The EEOC alleges that Kaplan’s rejection of job applicants based on their credit history has “disparate impact” on black applicants.

The Court held that, because plaintiff’s CSRA claim was based on her EEO charge, the district court’s dismissal of the CSRA claim was improper.  The Court also held that the district court erred in granting summary judgment against plaintiff on her WPA claim as she created genuine issues of material fact regarding whether her whistle-blowing was properly reported and known by the supervisor who terminated her.  However, the Court held that the district court was correct to grant summary judgment against plaintiff on her Title VII claims because plaintiff was not whistle-blowing about an employment practice, which is necessary for a Title VII retaliation claim.

In Coleman v. Maryland Court of Appeals, the Court upheld the dismissal of the plaintiff’s Title VII claims on the pleadings.  Applying the misguided heightened pleading standard recently created by the Supreme Court, the Fourth Circuit held the plaintiff did not sufficiently allege discrimination because he did not establish a plausible basis for believing white co-employees were similarly situated to him or that race was the true basis for his termination.  The Court also upheld the dismissal of his FMLA claims, holding that under the Eleventh Amendment, Congress has not properly allowed FMLA claims against a State where the FMLA claim is based on the need for leave for one’s own medical condition.

Under Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act, all employees — even those not represented by a union — are protected from retaliation when they engage in “protected concerted activity.”  Although social networking is new, the NLRB has taken the commonsense view that employees have the right to jointly criticize their employer through Facebook, just as they would over the water cooler.

Second, the large financial reform law (Dodd-Frank) passed earlier this year includes some expanded provisions that support whistle-blowers in the financial industry.  The SEC has now issued rules further defining this program.  Coverage is here.  Note also that the Dodd-Frank Act contains protections against retaliation toward whistle-blowers.