The anti-retaliation provision in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act extends protection to an employee who speaks out about discrimination not on her own initiative, but in answering questions during an employer’s internal investigation, the U.S. Supreme Court rules.

The Court decision revives the retaliation claim of a 30-year employee who reported during an internal investigation of sexual harassment rumors that she had been sexually harassed by the subject of the investigation. The employee was subsequently terminated by the employer for embezzlement and she filed suit against the employer.

A lower court and the Sixth Circuit had held that the retaliation provisions of Title VII did not apply, since she had not “instigated or initiated any complaint,” but had “merely answered questions by investigators in an already-pending internal investigation initiated by someone else.” Since there had been no Equal Employment Opportunity Commission charge pending at the time, the lower court concluded that her retaliation claim also failed under the participation clause, which Sixth Circuit precedent confined to protecting “‘an employee’s participation in an employer’s internal investigation . . . where that investigation occurs pursuant to a pending EEOC charge.’”

The Supreme Court rejects this view, holding that her statements in the investigation, a “disapproving account of [the accused’s] sexually obnoxious behavior toward her” was covered by the anti-retaliation prohibition on opposing illegal discrimination. “‘Oppose’ goes beyond ‘active, consistent’ behavior in ordinary discourse, and may be used to speak of someone who has taken no action at all to advance a position beyond disclosing it. Thus, a person can ‘oppose’ by responding to someone else’s questions just as surely as by provoking the discussion. Nothing in the statute requires a freakish rule protecting an employee who reports discrimination on her own initiative but not one who reports the same discrimination in the same words when asked a question,” says the Court. Crawford v. Metropolitan Government of Nashville.