Ruling shows issues with antidiscrimantion law
Wisconsin shouldn’t rely on the courts to clean up sloppy laws and instead the legislature needs to take action to protect employers from being robbed by their workers.
In a 5-2 ruling, the Wisconsin Supreme Court recently ruled in favor of two brothers who said they were wrongfully terminated after steeling scrap metal from their employer, the Oconomowoc Area School District.
As reported by Wisconsin Public Radio, brothers Gregory and Jeff Cota were fired by the Oconomowoc Area School District after an investigation in 2014 found the brothers, a supervisor and coworker kept more than $5,000 that was supposed to be turned over to the district after they recycled scrap metal.
The town of Oconomowoc Police Department investigated the case for 11 months and cited the brothers for municipal theft. The brothers rejected a plea deal that would involve paying restitution in exchange for the case being dismissed and were fire the next day.
Wisconsin is a right to work state. This means that generally employers don’t need a reason to terminate employees.
Wisconsin is one of a 37 states that prohibit discrimination against employees and applicants on the basis of arrest and conviction records. By itself this is not a problem. People make mistakes and deserve second chances and a stupid decision made in youth should not be allowed to prevent people from gainful employment decades later.
However, Wisconsin law goes beyond offering second chances to, with the supreme court ruling, forcing employers who have been victims of a crime to be continue to employ the person who an investigation has found committed the crime.
“That is no way to treat the victim of an offense,” wrote Justice Janet Protasiewicz in the majority opinion, upholding the law as written.
Political pundits like to whine about so-called activist judges who take on the role of a sort of super legislature interpreting the laws to say what they think it should say. This case is an example of the court doing its job and basing a decision on what the law says, even though the law itself is flawed.
The flip side of the court ruling, as pointed out in Justice Annette Ziegler’s dissenting opinion is that employees should not be given the benefit of the doubt and employers should quickly fire them rather than waiting until after an investigation.
The court upheld the law as written, exposing a clear flaw. The legislature should move quickly to apply a common sense fix to the law to give employers, as the victims of a crime, should have the absolute right to terminate an employee based on theft, damage to company property or other criminal behavior directly impacting he employer.
Forcing an employer to continue to pay an employee who stole from them is the moral equivalent of forcing domestic abuse victims to live with their abusers.
Members of the Wisconsin Legislature should set aside their political games and move to address this flaw in state law.
The Central Wisconsin Publications Editorial Board consists of publisher Kris O’Leary and editor Brian Wilson.
