WASHINGTON — To the surprise of civil rights advocates, the Supreme Court on Tuesday strengthened workplace anti-discrimination laws, ruling that employees who say they were punished for complaining of bias can sue for damages.
In a pair of decisions, the court concluded that claims of retaliation were covered by long-standing civil rights laws, even though this kind of discrimination was not mentioned specifically in the statutes.
The expansion of employee rights stands in contrast to a series of pro-business rulings by the high court last year that limited the rights of workers.
Tuesday's decisions do not amount to a sharp change in the law. Most civil rights laws already protect employees against being punished for complaining of bias based on their race, religion, gender, national origin or age. However, in both cases the court read an older law broadly to give employees additional rights to sue for discrimination.
In the first decision, the court said the nation's oldest civil rights law, passed just after the Civil War, not only gave blacks the same rights as whites to make contracts, but it protected them from being fired for voicing complaints about the mistreatment of other black employees.
The 7-2 ruling clears the way for a former assistant manager at a Cracker Barrel restaurant south of Chicago to take his lawsuit to a jury. He alleged that he was fired after complaining about a white supervisor who made racist comments and about the firing of a black food service worker.
In the second decision, the court said older federal employees who were punished after complaining of age bias could sue the government for retaliation. Government lawyers had argued that these workers were protected by the civil service system and had no right to sue.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. disagreed, and spoke for a 6-3 majority in clearing the way for federal employees to sue if they were victims of on-the-job retaliation. The decision revives a suit filed by a 45-year-old postal clerk from Puerto Rico.
Civil rights and civil liberties advocates said they were pleasantly surprised by the two rulings. Steven R. Shapiro, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the rulings were "appropriately grounded in the realities of the workplace."
"Workers who fear retaliation are far less likely to report discrimination," he added.
