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The Supreme Court's Anti-Retaliation Principle, Richard E. Moberly

Nebraska College of Law: Faculty Publications

In five cases issued during the last five years, the Supreme Court interpreted statutory anti-retaliation provisions broadly to protect employees who report illegal employer conduct. These decisions conflict with the typical understanding of this Court as pro-employer and judicially conservative. In a sixth retaliation decision during this time, however, the Court interpreted constitutional anti-retaliation protection narrowly, which fits with the Court’s pro-employer image but diverges from the anti-retaliation stance it appeared to take in the other five retaliation cases. This Article explains these seemingly anomalous results by examining the last fifty years of the Supreme Court’s retaliation jurisprudence. In doing …