Three Exceptions To At-Will Employment

Losing your job is a very difficult experience. Along with the prospects of uncertainty and financial hardship that a loss of employment brings, there's often feelings of anger and betrayal that rise up in the victim. As a result, people who been fired from their job are often drawn to the prospect of legal action against their former employer.

Unfortunately for these folks, at-will employment is the overriding law of the land. Essentially, if your job doesn't require a written contract, you can have your employment terminated for almost any reason at all. However, there are exceptions to this rule that everyone needs to understand.

Illegal Reasons

At-will employment is present in every state in the United States except for Montana. That
Only an attorney with experience and knowledge of the local laws and statutes can advise you on how you can protect your rights in these situations.

Three Exceptions to At-Will Employment

In spite of having an at-will employment landscape, many states have certain exceptions to the at-will provision. Like many laws, these exceptions vary by state--some states observe all three exceptions while others observe some or none of them. That means that, depending on your state of residence and the circumstances surrounding your employment, you might have legal options available if you've been fired--even if the reasons for that termination aren't obviously illegal.

The first of these exceptions is the Public Policy exception. Observed in 43 of the 50 states in the U.S., this exception states that an employee's termination is not protected by the at-will provision if the firing is against an explicit, well-established public policy of the state. These policies can include:

Filing injury and worker's compensation claims
Cooperating with police or government agency
If your handbook states a certain code of conduct that you have not broken, and if it states that certain steps must be followed prior to termination, your employment relationship begins to look a lot like a contract position. In those cases, it is possible to assert that you had a reasonable expectation that your employment would continue.

The final exception is the Covenant of Good Faith and Fair Dealing exception. In many ways, this is the most difficult legal puzzle of the three major exceptions. It states that employment relationships and terminations must be conducted in good faith--and not driven by ill intent.

This legislation acknowledges that employees require employment for their lives to continue in a positive and self-sustaining fashion. As a result, terminations driven by malice can cause undue injury to a person--placing a great deal of power in the hands of employers. They must, then, conduct themselves in good faith in every employment relationship, in spite of the at-will