Bass, Berry & Sims attorney Bob Horton provided insight to Law360 on the Supreme Court’s ruling in Green v. Brennan allowing the constructive discharge claim period to begin when an employee resigns, not when the employer commits the last allegedly discriminatory act. As Bob points out in the article,
This ruling essentially permits sand-bagging by the employee who claims to have been constructively discharged. Under the court’s ruling, the employee can now wait months or longer after the alleged discriminatory conduct before resigning, without having ever complained about the discriminatory conduct, and still file a timely EEOC charge up to 300 days after the employee’s resignation. Ironically, employees will presumably continue to be required to file a harassment charge under Title VII within 300 days of the discriminatory event but may wait to resign and file a second charge of discrimination based on the same conduct after the resignation. Obviously, the longer the employee waits to resign, the more difficult it may be to convince the court and/or jury that a ‘reasonable person’ would have felt compelled to resign as a result of the offending conduct.
The full article, “Attys React To High Court’s Constructive Discharge Ruling,” was published by Law360 on May 24, 2016, and is available online.