Court says company can't fire employee's fiancée

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court says companies can't fire people simply because they are in a relationship with other employees who complain of discrimination.

The high court on Monday unanimously ruled for Eric Thompson, who was fired from a North American Stainless plant in Kentucky after his fiancee, who also worked there, filed a sex discrimination complaint.

Thompson's fiancee and now-wife, Miriam Regalado, filed a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging that her supervisors at a stainless steel manufacturing plant discriminated against her because of her gender. The EEOC told North American Stainless of her charge on Feb. 13, 2003.

Thompson was fired on March 7.

Thompson then went to the EEOC and complained that he had been fired because of his fiancée's discrimination charge. But the federal courts threw out his lawsuit.

The law does not allow retaliation against people who file discrimination claims. But federal judges have said that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act also does not allow people who haven't complained of discrimination to sue for retaliation.

But Justice Antonin Scalia said in a unanimous court judgment that Thompson clearly falls under the category of people who can sue for retaliation.

"Thompson is not an accidental victim of the retaliation — collateral damage, so to speak, of the employer's unlawful act," Scalia said. "To the contrary, injuring him was the employer's intended means of harming Regalado. Hurting him was the unlawful act by which the employer punished her. In these circumstances, we think Thompson well within the zone of interests sought to be protected by Title VII. He is a person aggrieved with standing to sue."

Thompson's lawsuit against North American Stainless now goes back to the lower courts.

North American Stainless argued that allowing a fiance to sue would open the floodgates to retaliation lawsuits from everyone who gets fired who had any connection to a complaining employee. But Scalia said the court was refusing to create any hard and fast rules to follow because the anti-retaliation law is worded broadly.

"We expect that firing a close family member will almost always meet the .standard, and inflicting a milder reprisal on a mere acquaintance will almost never do so, but beyond that we are reluctant to generalize," Scalia said.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer joined in with the judgment, with Ginsburg noting in a separate opinion that the EEOC's manual says that retaliation can be "challenged by both the individual who engaged in protected activity and the relative, where both are employees."

Justice Elena Kagan did not take part in the case because she worked on it while serving as solicitor general.

Regalado's complaint of gender discrimination was investigated by the EEOC but it found no basis to support her charge.

The case is Thompson v. North American Stainless LP, 09-291.