Adverse Actions

An adverse action is an action taken to try to keep someone from opposing a discriminatory practice, or from participating in an employment discrimination proceeding. Examples of adverse actions include:

--employment actions such as termination, refusal to hire, and denial of promotion,

--other actions affecting employment such as threats, unjustified negative evaluations, unjustified negative references, or increased surveillance, and

--any other action such as an assault or unfounded civil or criminal charges that are likely to deter reasonable people from pursuing their rights.

Adverse actions do not include petty slights and annoyances, such as stray negative comments in an otherwise positive or neutral evaluation, "snubbing" a colleague, or negative comments that are justified by an employee's poor work performance or history. Malicious and intentionally fraudulent negative comments are actionable.

Even if the prior protected activity alleged wrongdoing by a different employer, retaliatory adverse actions are unlawful. For example, it is unlawful for a worker's current employer to retaliate against him for pursuing a charge against a former employer. An employer might do this out of fear that they too will end up in litigation with an employee, who has a so-called history of filing a complaint against an employer.

An employer might try to short-circuit any future problems with this employee by engaging in actions that are meant to drive the employee out or to drill into the employee that they should remain quiet regarding complaints. This would represent an adverse action, a violation of Federal statutes.

For more information about adverse actions, see EEOC's Compliance Manual Section 8, Chapter II, Part D. The address is http://www.eeoc.gov/policy/docs/retal.html#IIpartD.