As an employer, you certainly want to avoid disputes with employees who lose their jobs. You know that there are concerns about wrongful terminations. For instance, you are aware that some employees are in protected classes, and these are designed to avoid discrimination. These protected classes include things like age, pregnancy status, religion, race, national origin or disability.
But does this mean that it may be impossible for you to terminate some of your employees if you are interested in doing so? Say that an employee has been making a significant number of mistakes or engaging in detrimental conduct to the company. But that employee is also pregnant. Does this mean it is impossible to fire her because she is in a protected class, so it would be a wrongful termination?
The reason for the firing
No, it is not automatically a wrongful termination just because the employee is in a protected class. You can still proceed with the termination.
The key is to demonstrate that there is a valid reason for that firing. Remember that the law states that employees cannot be terminated or discriminated against because of their inclusion in these protected classes.
In other words, you cannot fire the employee because she is pregnant. But if you can clearly show that there were other reasons for the termination, you can still fire her even though she is pregnant. It just cannot be your reason for doing so, because that would be discriminatory in nature. But there are still plenty of reasons to fire employees, such as missing excessive amounts of work, making a significant number of mistakes, engaging in conflicts with other employees and things of this nature.
These can still be complex cases because the employee may claim they were discriminated against, so it is important for you to understand all of your legal options as an employer.