I will be speak­ing (and pre­sent­ing on arti­cle) on recent devel­op­ments in retal­i­a­tion under fed­eral and West Vir­ginia employ­ment law on either Octo­ber 29 or 30, 2010 at the annual con­fer­ence of the West Vir­ginia Employ­ment Lawyers Asso­ci­a­tion. The con­fer­ence will be at Ogle­bay Resort and Con­fer­ence Cen­ter in Wheel­ing, West Vir­ginia. The final sched­ule is not out yet, so I don’t know whether my speech with be on Octo­ber 29 or 30.

Retal­i­a­tion law in recent years has been one of those devel­op­ing areas, and much more often than not the move­ment in the case law has been in the direc­tion of expand­ing pro­tec­tions for employ­ees against retal­i­a­tion. The US Supreme Court espe­cially has focused on retal­i­a­tion law, and has “plugged gaps” in the law for fed­eral employ­ees to include pro­tec­tion for retal­i­a­tion claims, has low­ered the thresh­old for what is action­able retal­i­a­tion, and has broad­ened the def­i­n­i­tion of “oppo­si­tion” which enti­tles employ­ees to protection.

One of the dan­gers for employ­ers from retal­i­a­tion claims is that, after an employee com­plains about alleged dis­crim­i­na­tion, the employer may be guilty of retal­i­a­tion even if a jury decides there was no dis­crim­i­na­tion to sup­port the employee’s orig­i­nal com­plaint. An employee may suc­ceed in a retal­i­a­tion claim as long as his com­plaint was made in good faith, even if the employee was wrong about the com­plaint of discrimination.

In the prior 2 years at the annual con­fer­ence for WVELA, I spoke and wrote arti­cles on awards of attor­neys’ fees under employ­ment dis­crim­i­na­tion laws, and on age dis­crim­i­na­tion.