As you may hear over and over again, Texas is an at-will employment state. What that means is that there are limited protections for employees in the workplace. At-will employment means that employers can change the terms and conditions of a person’s employment, discipline an employee, or even terminate an employee for any reason or no reason at all. The actions of the employer may be unfair, they may be unreasonable, they may even be based off false allegations, but that does not mean that an employer’s actions are unlawful.
For an employer’s actions to be unlawful, the employer’s actions must be based on unlawful motivations. Unlawful motivations would be things like race, color, national origin, religion, sex, age, or disability. These are just a few examples of the unlawful motivations an employer may have.
Continue Reading I complained of discrimination. My employer retaliated. Am I protected?