Employers are sometimes furious about claims lodged by employees for charges of discrimination filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission the employers consider to be false and malicious. Regardless of this reaction, taking disciplinary action against employees based on the charge’s allegations creates significant legal risks. Last week, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals (which includes Georgia) affirmed a jury verdict against an employer found to have fired the plaintiff over allegations contained in his EEOC charge.

In Ellis v. Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office, the plaintiff was a civilian employee who filed an EEOC charge alleging that he had been discriminated and retaliated against based on his religion and disability. He filed suit alleging that the employer terminated him for alleged false statements contained in the charge. The district court instructed the jury that such charge statements could not serve as a legitimate basis for a termination decision. This instruction was based on case law from 1969 that grants employees an absolute privilege from adverse action based on the charge’s contents.

The employer appealed this decision to the Eleventh Circuit, arguing that this precedent had been overruled by a subsequent Supreme Court case. The Eleventh Circuit disagreed, affirming the verdict. The court also stated that the veracity of the charge’s allegations is irrelevant to this protection.

When filing an EEOC charge, the employee states that its contents are accurate under penalty of perjury. Theoretically, the charging party could be criminally prosecuted by the Department of Justice for lying to the agency. Such prosecutions are very rare, probably due to the difficulty of proving perjury and DOJ resources being devoted to higher priority investigations. As this decision illustrates, employers that attempt to hold employees accountable for allegations they consider false face a significant risk of liability for retaliation.

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