State Wrongful Dismissal Legislation
Henry H. Perritt
DOI: 10.2190/AMY2-7V9J-XAXK-KL7Y
Abstract
The uncertainties of common law wrongful dismissal laws have resulted in proposals for comprehensive legislation codifying "just cause" and other protections for employees, culminating in the approval by the commissioners on uniform state laws of a model wrongful termination from employment act. The resulting model act represents a balanced approach to rationalizing a mess. This article briefly reviews the interests involved and sketches a resulting political calculus. It identifies the basic conceptual alternatives for wrongful dismissal legislation and then summarizes the principal features of the new model act. The article concludes that potential constitutional challenges against wrongful dismissal legislation like the model act lack merit. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.