Workplace Investigations and Privacy of Electronic Communications

The situation is common enough: an employee is alleged to have engaged in misconduct and, as part of its investigation, the employer decides to search the employee’s company-issued computer for any relevant documents and communications.   One might expect that because the company owns the computer, anything discovered on the computer would be fair game.  That expectation, however, can sometimes lead employers astray – and straight into a claim under electronic privacy and anti-hacking statutes like the Stored Communications Act (SCA) and Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA).

Federal Statutes

The SCA and CFAA are federal statutes that protect against the unauthorized access of electronic communications and information. Under those statutes, employers have considerable room to monitor and access communications on their own networks and equipment.  The SCA, for example, generally exempts communications that are transmitted or stored on an employer’s proprietary electronic communications system.  That exemption does not apply, however, to communications that are stored outside of the company’s system, such as emails stored in an employee’s Gmail or Yahoo! account. Consequently, an employer that accesses an employee’s private email account risks violating the law – regardless of whether a company-issued computer allowed the employer to do so (for example, because the password for the employee’s private email account was stored in the computer’s internet browser).

Cases to Discuss

As a case in point, in Lazette v. Kulmatycki (N.D. Ohio 2013), a supervisor used a former employee’s smartphone to access the employee’s personal email account after her employment ended. The employee had been issued a smartphone during her employment and had been told that she could use it for personal matters.  When the employee left, she returned the smartphone and believed that she had deleted her Gmail account from the phone.  In fact, the Gmail account was still accessible on the phone and the supervisor, rather than deleting the account, used it to read the employee’s opened and unopened email—a total of 48,000 emails over an eighteen-month period.  After becoming aware of the supervisor’s actions, the employee changed her Gmail password and then sued claiming violations of the SCA, among other things.  The employer sought to dismiss the complaint, but was unsuccessful. The court found that the mere fact that the supervisor had used a company-owned device to access the employee’s email account did not grant him the authority to do so.  It also found that the employee’s inadvertent failure to delete the account from the phone did not mean she had given implied consent to access the account, particularly where she believed she had deleted the account and was unaware of the possibility that others might be able to access it. On the issue of consent, the court also noted that even if she had been aware that her emails might be monitored, that implied consent would not have been unlimited, given that “random monitoring is one thing; reading everything is another.”

More recently, in Owen v. Cigna (N.D. Ill. 2016), a court held that an employee had a viable claim under the SCA where her employer allegedly used her work computer to access emails from her personal email account. The employee had left her job and had filed a charge of discrimination for sexual harassment.  In responding to the charge, the employer attached emails that it had obtained from the employee’s personal email account, but which the employee claimed had been obtained without her consent. The employer argued that it was authorized to access the emails, but the court dispensed with this argument quickly and found that although the employer had the undeniable authority to access the employee’s work computer after she stopped working, it was not authorized to access the employee’s personal email account.

Both of these cases serve as important reminders for employers to consider the potential privacy of electronic communications when performing workplace investigations. Although there are certainly steps that employers can take to reduce any expectation of privacy that employees may have in their electronic communications at work, employers must also recognize that mere ownership of a computer, tablet, smartphone, or other electronic device does not provide carte blanche access any account an employee accessed on the device.

Maine Law Court charts Different Course for Age Discrimination

It is not often that the Law Court interprets the Maine Human Rights Act (MHRA) differently from its federal counterparts.  In a recent decision, though, the Law Court did exactly that – it held that the standard for evaluating claims of disparate impact age discrimination under the MHRA is different from the standard under the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act.

Scamman v. Shaw's Supermarkets, Inc.

Unlike disparate treatment claims, which are based on an employer’s alleged intentional discrimination against an individual based on a protected status, disparate impact claims arise where an employee alleges that he or she is a member of a protected class that is disproportionately affected by a practice of the employer.  In  Scamman v. Shaw’s Supermarkets, Inc., several employees filed a charge of discrimination with the Maine Human Rights Commission alleging that they were terminated by Shaw’s as part of a reduction in force that disproportionately affected older employees.  

Shaw’s explained the reduction in force was necessitated by cost-cutting business imperatives.  The investigator analyzed the employees’ claim using a burden-shifting framework that federal courts apply to disparate impact claims under Title VII and which requires an employer to produce evidence that its practice is justified by “business necessity.”  Ultimately, the Commission determined that there were reasonable grounds to believe that Shaw’s discriminated against the employees based on a disparate impact theory, and the Commission voted unanimously to adopt the investigator’s analysis and recommendation. The employees then sued in Superior Court, but Shaw’s removed the case to the U.S. District Court.  

Once there, Shaw’s raised a threshold issue: is the “business necessity” framework the correct standard to apply to disparate impact age discrimination claims under the MHRA, or does the “reasonable factor other than age” (RFOA) standard from the ADEA apply instead?  This was a threshold issue because the parties agreed that if the RFOA standard applied, Shaw’s would be entitled to judgment as a matter of law.  Unlike the “business necessity” framework, the RFOA standard does not inquire into whether an employer’s practice constitutes a business necessity; rather, once an employee shows evidence of a policy or practice with a disparate impact, an employer simply must show that the challenged practice is based on a reasonable factor other than age.  The result is that the scope of disparate impact liability is narrower under the ADEA than it is under Title VII. 

Because there was no controlling precedent, the District Court certified to the Law Court the question of which standard applies to disparate impact age discrimination claims under the MHRA.  After reviewing the text of the MHRA and finding it unclear, the Law Court deferred to the Commission’s interpretation of the statute and its conclusion that the “business necessity” standard is the applicable standard.  The Law Court found that this was a reasonable interpretation based on the legislative history of the MHRA and the fact that, despite being amended multiple times, the statute has never contained an RFOA provision like the ADEA.  And, while the Law Court acknowledged that it often looks to federal law to interpret the MHRA, it observed that it has done so only when the “federal and state laws are substantially identical,” which the Law Court found was not the case here given the absence of any RFOA provision in the MHRA.

Take home for Employers

Where policies are challenged under the MHRA on the grounds that they disproportionately affect older workers, it is now clear that employers seeking to justify those policies will not be able to do so simply by showing that the impact is based a reasonable factor other than age.  What remains to be seen is the effect that this decision may have on other potential differences between the MHRA and the ADEA, such as the applicable standard for causation – “mixed-motive” or “but-for” – in cases of intentional age discrimination.  The take-home for employers is that claims for disparate impact age discrimination under the MHRA will now be evaluated using a burden-shifting “business necessity” framework, not the more generous “reasonable factor other than age” standard under the ADEA. Stay tuned.    

First Circuit Revives Class-Action Overtime Lawsuit over Absent Comma

Sometimes, small things can turn out to be very big.  Take punctuation, for instance.  Just recently, the First Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision that proves the point: finding that an absent comma created an ambiguity in Maine’s overtime law, the court reversed summary judgment against several truck drivers and revived their class-action lawsuit against Oakhurst Dairy for unpaid overtime.

At issue in the court’s decision is the meaning of an exemption in the overtime law that covers employees whose work involves the “canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution” of certain food products.  The specific issue revolves around the meaning of “packing for shipment or distribution,” which the parties had disputed during summary judgment proceedings at the District Court. The drivers argued that the phrase refers to the single activity of “packing,” which may be done for either “shipment” or “distribution.”  Because the drivers were not involved in “packing” goods, the drivers argued that they did not fall under the exemption and were therefore entitled to overtime. Oakhurst argued, however, that the phrase “packing for shipment or distribution” encompasses two distinct activities – “packing for shipment” and “distribution” – each of which is a stand-alone exempt activity.  Because the delivery drivers were engaged in the “distribution” of goods, Oakhurst argued that the drivers were exempt and therefore not entitled to overtime. After considering these dueling interpretations, the District Court agreed with Oakhurst’s interpretation and granted summary judgment in its favor.

The drivers appealed and presented the First Circuit with a single question, which was: what does the phrase “packing for shipment or distribution” really mean?  To resolve this question, the court looked first to Maine precedent construing the exemption.  Although Oakhurst pointed to a Superior Court decision construing the exemption in its favor, the First Circuit declined to give it any weight as it was not binding authority.  So, the court turned to the text of the exemption and addressed several canons of interpretation offered by the parties.

For its part, Oakhurst argued that its interpretation was supported by the rule against surplusage, which treats each word in a statute as having an independent meaning so as to eliminate redundancies.  Explaining that “shipment” and “distribution” are synonyms, Oakhurst argued that its interpretation was the only way to avoid making the words “shipment” and “distribution” redundant.  Oakhurst also pointed to the convention of using a conjunction to indicate the last item in a series and argued that the lack of a conjunction before “shipment,” and the presence of one before “distribution,” indicated that “distribution” was the last item in the series. Finally, Oakhurst argued that, although a serial comma before “distribution” and after “shipment” would have conclusively established its interpretation, the serial comma was missing because the drafting manual for the Maine Legislature expressly advises drafters not to use it (advice that certainly did not come from E.B. White or his Elements of Style).

Countering Oakhurst’s interpretation, the drivers argued that “shipment” and “distribution” are not synonyms and that their use in connection with “packing” creates no redundancies.  Digging further into the text of the exemption, the drivers pointed out that it is comprised of a series of verbal nouns that ends with “packing” and that, because “shipment” and “distribution” are the only non-verbal nouns in the series, the doctrine of parallel usage implies that those terms serve the same grammatical role by modifying “packing.” As for the missing serial comma, the drivers argued that the Legislature’s drafting manual is not “dogmatic” and that, if the Legislature had actually intended “distribution” to be a distinct activity, the missing comma would give rise to the very ambiguity that the drafting manual was intended to avoid.

Acknowledging  that there was “no comma in place to break the tie” between the parties’ interpretations, the First Circuit turned to the exemption’s purpose and legislative history. However, the court found these provided no more clarity than the text. Finding itself back where it began, the court fell back on yet another rule of construction, which instructs that where a provision in the state’s wage and hour laws is ambiguous, the provision should be construed liberally to further the remedial purpose of the statute.  Applying that rule of construction in this case, the court concluded that the ambiguity favored the drivers’ more narrow interpretation of the exemption.

New Developments in Medical Marijuana and the Workplace

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, twenty-three states now have medical marijuana laws on the books.  The conventional wisdom is that these laws bring with them greater protections for employees who are users of medical marijuana.  Court rulings over the last several years, however, have shown that this conventional wisdom is not always correct and that not all state medical marijuana laws are created equal.

For example, last summer the Colorado Supreme Court held that although Colorado law allowed for the use of medical marijuana, that law did not prevent an employer from terminating a medical marijuana user who had tested positive for marijuana in violation of the company’s zero-tolerance drug policy.  Reaching a similar conclusion, a federal district court in Washington recently dismissed an employee’s discrimination complaint and found that the law in Washington does not require employers to accommodate the use of medical marijuana where they have a drug-free workplace policy.  Swaw v. Safeway, Inc. (W.D. Wash. 2015).  In Swaw, the court pointed to an earlier 2011 decision from the Washington Supreme Court, which held that Washington’s medical marijuana law “does not regulate the conduct of a private employer or protect an employee from being discharged because of authorized medical marijuana use.”

That courts in Colorado and Washington (and California and Oregon, to name a few others) have construed medical marijuana laws in favor of employers does not mean that employers in other states with medical marijuana laws can assume their courts would reach similar interpretations.  This is because the medical marijuana laws in some states, such as Washington and Colorado, simply de-criminalize medical marijuana without providing any specific employment protections.  Other states, however, such as Maine, include specific protections that prohibit employers from taking adverse action against an employee based on his or her status as a medical marijuana user.  Consequently, court rulings from “de-criminalization” states should not be viewed as indicative of how a court would rule in another jurisdiction, such as Maine, where the applicable law expressly provides for some level of employment protection for medical marijuana users.

Although Maine’s courts have had little opportunity to weigh in on the issue of medical marijuana, Maine’s Department of Labor has recently issued a report that recommends several changes to the state’s drug testing law.  The report is the culmination of a workgroup that was convened by MDOL to explore a number of issues relating to substance use and abuse in the workplace, including the medical use of marijuana. The report, which is available here, recommends two changes.  The first change is directed at streamlining the process to approve drug testing policies and recommends the use of a uniform drug testing policy, which would be prepared by MDOL and used by all employers in the state. The second change involves replacing the “probable cause” standard for drug testing with a program whereby employers would receive training to detect impairments, regardless of their cause, and employers would then have the option to refer the alleged impairment case to a “preferred occupational provider” to confirm the impairment and make recommendations to address or accommodate the cause.

At-Will Employment Clauses and the NLRB

The National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) has made headlines in the last few years with its close scrutiny of workplace social media policies.  However, making something of a quieter splash, the NLRB has also been scrutinizing another practice that, in its view, has the potential to “chill” employee rights in violation of the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA”):  at-will employment clauses in employee handbooks.

The issue of at-will employment clauses came to the fore in 2012, when an administrative law judge found that the following language in an at-will provision in an employee handbook violated the NLRA:  “I further agree that the at-will employment relationship cannot be amended, modified or altered in any way.”  In the judge’s opinion, this acknowledgement, which followed a standard description of the at-will employment relationship, violated the NLRA because it required the employee to agree that the relationship could not be changed and amounted to a waiver of the employee’s right to advocate for a change in status.

More recently, however, in a case called Windsor Care Centers, the NLRB’s Office of General Counsel (“Office”) found that an at-will clause was not unlawful where it provided the following language at the end of the clause:

Only the Company President is authorized to modify the Company’s at-will employment policy or enter into any agreement contrary to this policy.  Any such modification must be in writing and signed by the employee and the President.

In Windsor, the Office explained that the NLRB applies a two-step inquiry to determine whether a work rule would reasonably tend to chill employees in exercising their rights.  First, a rule is unlawful if it explicitly prohibits employees from exercising their rights under the NLRA.  Second, a rule is unlawful even if it does not explicitly restrict protected activities if: (1) employees would reasonably construe the rule to prohibit protected activity; (2) the rule was created in response to union activity; or (3) the rule has been applied so as to restrict protected activity.

Applying this two-step inquiry, the Office found that the at-will clause in Windsor did not explicitly restrict protected activities and that the company had neither created the rule in response to union activity nor applied it in a discriminatory manner.  The Office therefore concluded that the clause would be unlawful only if employees would reasonably construe it to prohibit protected activity.  According to the Office, the clause could not reasonably be construed as restrictive, because the language “simply describes the method by which employees can, at present, create an enforceable employment contract with the employer modifying their at-will status.”  Because the language did not require employees to agree that their status could not be changed, the Office concluded the at-will clause was lawful and distinguishable from the clause at issue in the 2012 case, American Red Cross Arizona Blood Services.

In light of the NLRB’s recent activity, businesses should revisit the language in their employee handbooks and consider revising at-will provisions that do not allow for any modification of an employee’s at-will status.