If you lost your job in Florida because you complained about illegal behavior or asserted your legal rights, you may have a case for wrongful termination. Federal and Florida employment laws prohibit employers from retaliating against employees who exercise their workplace rights. In some circumstances, employees are also protected for whistleblowing: reporting that the company has broken laws unrelated to workers’ rights (such as laws regulating consumer safety or environmental protections).

Understanding Retaliation

An employer retaliates when it takes action against an employee because the employee has exercised a legal right or complained of illegal behavior. Many employment laws—including those that regulate workplace safety, wages and hours, and discrimination—include a prohibition on retaliation.

Government agencies, such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, are legally tasked with interpreting and enforcing these laws. But these agencies typically don’t conduct random workplace audits looking for violations. Instead, they rely on employee complaints that an employer has broken the law. If employers were free to fire employees who complained, employees would stop reporting violations and these important laws would go unenforced.

Once an agency receives an employee complaint, it might investigate, impose a fine, or even make an administrative finding that an employer has likely violated the law. However, the agency almost never files suit on an employee’s behalf. Instead, it’s up to the employee to go to court and vindicate his or her rights.

Here are some laws that include a provision against retaliation:

• Laws prohibiting job-based discrimination and harassment. Your employer may not retaliate against you for complaining—whether to your employer, to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or to the Florida Commission on Human Relations—about discrimination prohibited by federal or Florida law. You are also protected if you give testimony, talk to an investigator, or otherwise participating in an internal or administrative proceeding regarding a discrimination or harassment complaint.
• Wage and hour laws. You may not be fired for complaining, whether within your company or to the federal Department of Labor, that your employer has violated the Fair Labor Standards Act. For example, you are protected if you complain about your employer’s failure to pay minimum wage or overtime as required by law.
• Leave laws. You can’t be fired for exercising your right to take time off work for family and medical leave, workers’ comp leave, voting or serving on a jury, or other legally protected reasons. (For more information, see Florida Family and Medical Leave Laws.)
• Health and safety laws. You may not be fired for reporting, whether within your company or to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, health and safety violations at your workplace.
• Worker’s compensation claim. Florida law prohibits employers from firing employees for filing or pursuing a worker’s comp claim.

Understanding Whistleblowing

Whistleblowing occurs when an employee reports illegal conduct at work that is not directly related to workplace rights. For example, if you report that your company is filing false tax returns or lying to government auditors, you are a whistleblower.

An employer may not fire an employee for blowing the whistle on certain types of misconduct. Some federal laws that prohibit certain types of unethical or illegal corporate behavior explicitly protect employee whistleblowers. For example, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, passed in 2002 to protect investors from corporate financial wrongdoing, includes whistleblower protections for employees who report financial irregularities and shareholder fraud.

Florida law also protects whistleblowers. Employers with ten or more employees may not fire an employee for reporting or objecting to the employer’s illegal practices. You may not be fired for objecting to, or refusing to participate in, any practice, policy, or activity of your employer that violates a law, rule, or regulation. You also may not be fired for testifying or otherwise providing information to a government agency, or making or threatening to make a written disclosure, under oath, to such an agency, about your employer’s violation of a law, rule, or regulation. However, before making such a written disclosure, you must inform your employer of the violation and wait a reasonable amount of time for the employer to fix the situation.

If You Were Fired for Whistleblowing or Retaliation

If your Florida employer fired you for reporting illegal behavior or exercising your legal rights, you may have a wrongful termination claim for retaliation or whistleblowing. Because these cases are complex, your first step should be meeting with an experienced local employment lawyer.

Talk to a Lawyer

As explained above, a number of state and federal laws protect employees who assert their rights or complain about misconduct. An experienced lawyer can help you figure out your options and how best to vindicate your rights.

Before you meet with a lawyer, sit down and draft a timeline that includes: the events underlying your complaint or your report, when you complained or tried to exercise your rights, who you spoke to (and when), and what happened as a result. To prove retaliation or whistleblowing, you must show that your employer fired you because of your complaint or report. Timing is very important: The less time that passes between your complaint or attempt to exercise your rights and your employer’s action against you, the stronger your claim is. You will also have to prove that the person who fired you (or made the decision to end your employment) knew of your complaint or report.

If you’re still out of work, you may be concerned about how you’ll come up with the money to pay a lawyer. Depending on your claims, however, a lawyer may be willing to take your case on a contingency fee basis. In a contingency fee arrangement, the lawyer is paid only if you win, by taking a percentage of the money you receive. Also, some retaliation statutes allow the court to award attorneys' fees, which means your employer will have to pay an extra amount for your legal fees if you win.

Filing a Government Charge

For certain retaliation claims, you may have to file a complaint with a government agency before you go to court. For example, you may not file a lawsuit alleging retaliation for complaining of harassment or discrimination under federal law without first filing a charge of discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. If you want to sue for wrongful termination in violation of the Sarbanes-Oxley whistleblower protections, you must first file a complaint with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. If you want to sue for wrongful termination under Florida’s whistleblower law, you must first file a claim with the Florida Commission on Human Relations.

Not all retaliation claims are subject to this rule, however. And, for some types of retaliation claims, you may—but are not required to—file an administrative charge before going to court. Your lawyer can help you figure out the requirements for your particular claim in your state, as well as the best strategy for proceeding if you have multiple options.

What You Can Collect If You Win a Retaliation or Whistleblowing Claim

The monetary damages available if you win a retaliation or whistleblowing case depend on the law underlying your claims and how strong those claims are. For most wrongful termination cases, an employee can ask for:

• back pay (wages and benefits you lost as a result of being wrongfully fired)
• reinstatement or front pay: you can ask the court to give you back your job or, if that’s not feasible, to award you the wages you will lose going forward until you find a new job
• any expenses you had to pay out of pocket as a result of being fired, such as the cost of searching for a new job, and
• attorneys' fees and court costs.

In some cases, you might also be entitled to emotional distress damages, awarded to compensate you for the pain and suffering caused by your termination. Punitive damages, intended to punish your employer for particularly egregious misconduct, may also be available.

In some whistleblower cases, you might be eligible for a fee or bounty for protecting the public from wrongdoing. (This might be a set amount per violation, a percentage of the total sanction against the employer, or some other amount determined by the statute or the court.) Your lawyer can explain what types of damages might be available in your case.