Leapfrog is for the Playground
On January 7, 2021, the Tennessee Supreme Court issued its opinion in Lemon v. Williamson County Schools et al., which determined, among other things, that tenured teachers who resign under allegedly intolerable working conditions cannot rely on the doctrine of “constructive discharge” to save their claims from dismissal.
The Court’s decision should serve not only as a reminder for administrators and tenured teachers to follow the Tenure Act’s steps and procedures, but for employers and employees in all fields to follow policies and not “leapfrog” over administrative procedures. Lemon also highlights the importance of consulting counsel before making decisions regarding termination or resignation.
The Teacher Tenure Act, Tennessee Code Annotated §§ 49-5-501 to -515, provides school teachers with a degree of job security by protecting them from arbitrary demotions and dismissals. In Lemon, the Plaintiff alleged that after teaching school for 14 years with no history of discipline and nothing but excellent evaluations, she was harassed and coerced to resign.
The Lawsuit.
After Plaintiff quit in 2017, she sued her local Board of Education, her principal, the superintendent, and the assistant superintendent alleging, among other things, that she had been wrongfully terminated. Although Plaintiff resigned and had not technically been terminated, she argued that her employer had “constructively discharged” her—meaning that, even though she resigned, she did so only because her employer caused intolerable working conditions that left her no choice but to quit her job against her will.
What is Constructive Discharge?
Generally, in the eyes of the law, “a constructive discharge is legally regarded as a firing rather than a resignation.”[1] For example, courts may be deemed to have been “constructively discharged” when they have been subjected to intolerable treatment due to race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.[2]
Crucially, constructive discharge is not in and of itself a legal claim for relief or damages. A plaintiff alleging constructive discharge can only make headway in court if she pleads constructive discharge as an element of a claim, such as a claim for discrimination or retaliatory discharge. Constructive discharge is, in essence, a substitute for the element of termination. In other words, when the elements of a claim require that the plaintiff be a terminated employee, the doctrine of constructive discharge will sometimes allow the employee to argue that, even though she quit, she was actually “terminated.”[3]
In this sense, constructive discharge is just a part of the story and one piece of a much larger puzzle. But employees cannot always rely upon the doctrine of constructive discharge to support their claims. For instance, Tennessee courts have held that constructive discharge does not apply in administrative unemployment compensation proceedings.[4]
The Trial Court’s Decision.
In Lemon, the Board of Education and other Defendants immediately moved to dismiss, arguing to the trial court that a teacher’s tenured status—and all of the procedural protections that accompany tenure—ends when the teacher resigns. The trial court agreed, finding:
The [T]eacher Tenure Act was enacted to protect school teachers from arbitrary demotions and dismissals. However, in the present matter, [Plaintiff] was neither dismissed [n]or discharged from her position […] rather, as she admits, [she] resigned before these actions could occur. […] Upon resignation, [her] status as a tenured teacher was terminated, thus removing her from the procedural protections provided by the Teacher Tenure Act for tenured teachers who have been improperly dismissed. Tenn. Code Ann. § 49-5-501(11)(B)(i). Consequently, it cannot be said that [she] was wrongfully discharged in violation of the Teacher Tenure Act.
The trial court dismissed the teacher’s case without prejudice and granted her leave to amend her complaint. The second time around, the Defendants moved for summary judgment, and the trial court granted their motion, finding that she had voluntarily resigned and failed to exhaust her administrative remedies. (Notably, the trial court also found that the intolerable conditions alleged by Plaintiff were not “outrageous” and consisted of “mere insults,” “annoyances, petty oppressions or other trivialities.” This suggests that the Plaintiff’s lawsuit may not have fared much better in the trial court even if she had successfully raised a constructive discharge claim.)
Plaintiff appealed. The Court of Appeals reversed the trial court’s dismissal. The Board of Education then appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court—which ultimately agreed with the trial court and affirmed the dismissal of the Plaintiff’s claims. Let’s look at the reasons why.
First, the Supreme Court noted that tenured teachers who face dismissal are protected by several mandatory procedural safeguards that can work in their favor. In a previous case, Thompson v. Memphis City School Bd. of Educ., the Tennessee Supreme Court rejected the school board’s attempts to paint a teacher’s failure to return to work after a medical leave as a “constructive resignation.” The Court outright rebuked the school board for failing to follow the Tenure Act, such as by failing to give the teacher notice of charges or denying her access to a pre-termination hearing. The Court noted that the alleged “constructive resignation” was a foreign concept to the Tenure Act, as neither the Act nor any court decisions interpreting it referenced such a term. In Thompson, the teacher was awarded reinstatement and full back salary, with no offset for the money she earned or could have earned in alternative employment after the termination. In short, the Thompson Court awarded the teacher and spared little remorse for the school board that failed to follow the Tenure Act.[5]
But the Lemon decision makes it clear that the Tenure Act is a double-edged sword. The Tennessee Supreme Court found that, just as the Tenure Act did not recognize a defense of “constructive resignation” in Thompson, neither would the statute recognize the judicially created concept of “constructive discharge” plead in Lemon:
[C]onstructive discharge is inconsistent with the comprehensive procedural framework in the Tenure Act. The doctrine of constructive discharge sits comfortably alongside the discrimination and retaliatory discharge statutes; it facilitates rather than frustrates the aims of those statutes. The same cannot be said of the Tenure Act. Thompson outlined the multi-layered procedures adopted in the Tenure Act, which are intended to give tenured teachers ample opportunity to be heard and ensure that dismissal decisions are made with transparency and by consensus of school administrators. Regardless of the reason for the decision, a tenured teacher who quits and then sues on the basis of constructive discharge leapfrogs over those procedures and frustrates a major aim of the Act.
The Court emphasized that the Tenure Act creates “procedures for tenured teachers to follow if they disagree with the school administrators’ disciplinary actions.” As a tenured teacher, Plaintiff could never have been dismissed without the “involvement [of] several layers of educational administrators and opportunity for the subject teacher to be heard”—a process that benefits not only the tenured teachers, but also the public at large. By resigning, Plaintiff forfeited her rights as a tenured teacher: “[U]pon resignation, Ms. Lemon’s status as a tenured teacher ended, and she was no longer entitled to the protections provided by the Tenure Act for tenured teachers who have been improperly dismissed.”[6]
Takeaways.
The Lemon and Thompson decisions offer several valuable lessons to school boards, administrators, teachers, and other employees and employers in other professions.
Employers must be mindful to follow administrative policies, processes, and procedures before terminating employees, as demonstrated in Thompson. In many cases employers would benefit from consulting competent legal counsel before firing—or taking adverse actions against—employees protected by statute. Although the constructive discharge doctrine does not apply to the Teacher Tenure Act, it can be found in various other scenarios.
Conversely, the same administrative policies, processes, and procedures that exist to protect employees may work against them in a court of law if they quit before the process has played out. Employees who believe that they may have a legal claim against their employer should consult with competent legal counsel before they resign to ensure that they have not waived their rights under the law.
Finally, this case began in 2017 and ended in 2021, attracting considerable media attention along the way. All parties to this case lived with this lawsuit through protracted litigation that swung back and forth in favor of different parties at different times. This case serves as a stark reminder that a party who wins in one court may very well lose on appeal, and neither party is guaranteed a favorable outcome.
For these reasons, employers and employees facing such issues can benefit significantly from involving legal counsel early on in their decision-making process. Even the best attorneys are not wizards or time-travelers; they cannot retroactively change the facts of the case, but they can assist employers and employees in making smarter decisions before a lawsuit is filed.
Eric Lyons
If you are an employer or employee in need of legal assistance, please feel free to contact Meridian Law, PLLC at (615) 229-7499, info@meridian.law, or www.meridian.law to schedule a free consultation and discuss your options. Although we are practicing social distancing at this time, we are available to meet in-person under certain circumstances or by telephone, videoconferencing, and/or email to discuss your options.
Disclaimer: The information in this blog post (“post”) is provided for general informational purposes only and may not reflect the current law in your jurisdiction. No information contained in this post should be construed as legal advice from Meridian Law, PLLC or the individual author, nor is it intended to be a substitute for legal counsel on any subject matter. No reader of this post should act or refrain from acting on the basis of any information included in, or accessible through, this post without seeking the appropriate legal or other professional advice on the particular facts and circumstances at issue from a lawyer licensed in the recipient’s state, country or other appropriate licensing jurisdiction.
[1] Phillips v. Interstate Hotels Corp. No. L07, 974 S.W.2d 680, 687 (Tenn. 1998) (plurality opinion).
[2] Campbell v. Fla. Steel Corp., 919 S.W.2d 26, 33–34 (Tenn. 1996).
[3] Crews v. Buckman Labs. Int’l, Inc., 78 S.W.3d 852 (Tenn. 2002).
[5] Thompson v. Memphis City Sch. Bd. of Educ., 395 S.W.3d 616 (Tenn. 2012).
[6] Lemon v. Williamson Cty. Sch., No. M201801878SCR11CV, 2021 WL 57957, at *5 (Tenn. Jan. 7, 2021).