Court right to protect whistle-blower workers

By The Des Moines Register

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It is a long-standing principle of Iowa law that an employee may be fired for any reason, or no reason at all, unless the worker is protected by a contract or a specific provision of state law. The Iowa Supreme Court has now expanded one such provision that protects whistle-blowers from retaliation.

In a decision last week, the court ruled that an employee of a Dubuque assisted-living center was wrongfully fired after reporting that supervisors forged names on state-required training documents. The court upheld the jury's award of $156,000 in damages for the lost wages and $22,500 for emotional distress for wrongfully discharging the whistle-blower with “willful and wanton disregard for the rights or safety of others.”

This ruling reasonably expands whistle-blower protection against employer retaliation. In this case, a worker was fired for doing the right thing by blowing the whistle after she witnessed supervisors forging documents purporting to show that the facility complied with state training requirements for the center's dementia unit. As the state's oversight of nursing homes increasingly is shown to be inadequate, conscientious employees must be encouraged to report threats to the health and safety of vulnerable residents.

The ruling, written by Justice David Wiggins, was supported by only a slim majority of the court, including Chief Justice Mark Cady and Justices Brent Appel and Daryl Hecht. Three justices dissented, saying the decision exceeded both the intent of the Iowa Legislature and prior rulings of the court that protect whistle-blowers.

Justice Edward Mansfield, writing for himself and Justices Thomas Waterman and Bruce Zager, said the ruling “sweeps away” the court's “previously clear legal standard and replaces it with a series of platitudes about health, safety, and welfare.” He wrote that employers may be reluctant to fire workers for fear of litigation, which he said “will be a new cost of doing business in Iowa.”

That concern seems exaggerated.

The Iowa Supreme Court, following the lead of a majority of states, created a “public policy” exception to Iowa's policy that employees can otherwise be fired at will. This exception recognizes that employees should be protected from retaliation with regard to matters of “public health, safety, morals and general welfare.” But the wrongful discharge of a protected employee must undermine a clearly defined public policy, and the employer must otherwise have no “overriding business justification” for the firing.

It's hard to imagine a flood of frivolous lawsuits by fired workers who must meet those tests.

The dissenters in this case objected to the idea that the court expanded worker protections without explicit authority from the Legislature. But this whistle-blower exception is a creation of the court, dating back to cases decided as long as 25 years ago, before the appointment of any current member of the court. The court has authority to expand a principle it created in the first place, and if the elected members of the Legislature believe the court has gone too far, they can reel it back in.

It's unlikely that will happen, however, and it should not.

An employee of a facility that bills itself as specializing in caring for patients suffering from dementia should not fear being fired for reporting fraudulent activities that could put those patients at risk.

That's common sense, not not a platitude.