A supervisor who had a retaliatory motive to fire an employee for her alleged whistle-blowing is insulated from personal liability by a “final decision maker’s wholly independent, legitimate decision to terminate” the employee, the Ninth Circuit rules.

The case involves an employee who had filed a complaint with a state agency alleging that one of her supervisors engaged in favoritism toward gays and lesbians. During an unrelated investigation conducted by the department’s director, it was discovered that the complaining employee had misused the employer’s property, conducted her personal business on company time, accessed other employee’s e-mails and documents without authorization, and engaged in workplace harassment of her own. The employee was subsequently terminated, and sued alleging retaliatory discharge by her supervisor. A jury agreed, awarding her $650,000 in damages, and her supervisor appealed.

The record does not indicate that the supervisor “improperly influenced” the investigation or the final decision to terminate such that she could be held personally liable for the discharge, the Court says. “[We] hold as a matter of law that [the director’s] wholly independent decision making negated any causal connection between [the supervisor’s] retaliatory bias and [the employee’s] termination,” the Court rules, and that the supervisor therefore is not liable for any damages the employee suffered as a result of her discharge. Lakeside-Scott v. Multnomah County and Brown