Eric and his fiance, Miriam, work for the same employer. Everyone in the workplace knows of their relationship. One day, Miriam files a charge with the EEOC alleging that she has been discriminated against on the basis of her gender. After the employer is notified of the charge, Eric is fired. Does Eric have a claim of retaliation against his employer even though he was not the one who complained about the discrimination? Well, until recently Eric would not have had a claim of retaliation if he was not engaged in a protected activity at the time of the retaliatory action. However, this year the United States Supreme Court decided that he did.
Prior to the Supreme Court's decision in Thompson v. North American Stainless LP earlier this year, "third-party retaliation" claims were analyzed by reviewing the language of the anti-retaliation provision at issue. And, generally speaking, denial of the claim was based on a conclusion that the person retaliated against must be the same person who had engaged in a protected activity (like Miriam, who had complained about gender discrimination).
Lo and behold the Supreme Court now says that a person aggrieved under Title VII is one who is "within the zone of interests" protected under Title VII, and it concludes that Eric was within the "zone of interest," was aggrieved by the employer's actions, and had standing to sue.
Of course, this holding raises the obvious question: how big is this "zone of interest"? Do we include husbands and wives? Siblings? Cousins? What about non-familial relationships? What about a family member who is not employed by the same employer, but whose employer is somehow induced to fire him or her?
While no New York court has specifically ruled on the question of third-party retaliation claims, recent New York federal court cases decided in the past few weeks seem to have applied the broad intention of the ruling in Thompson. The Second Circuit, for example, in Tepperwien v. Entergy Nuclear Operations, Inc., (observing the Thompson court's dicta) stated that “[g]iven the broad statutory text and the variety of workplace contexts in which retaliation may occur, Title VII's antiretaliation provision is simply not reducible to a comprehensive set of clear rules.”
