A recent commercial for Apple’s iPhone touts the device’s ability to keep your private information private. The commercial points to an ever-increasing concern in today’s world. We all know that we have personal information stored in a variety of places and, in some of those, we’re not the one in control of the flow of that content. Sometimes, the concern is the exposure of information that could be personally or professionally damaging to you. When the one doing that disclosing is your employer and the reason they’re doing it is a retaliatory one, then you may be entitled to sue and obtain compensation under the newly amended New York State Human Rights Law. A knowledgeable New York City workplace retaliation attorney can help show you how to accomplish this.
Earlier this year, the New York legislature passed S.5870/A.7101, and Gov. Kathy Hochul signed it into law. The bill amended Section 296 of the New York State Human Rights Law to expand the definition of what can constitute actionable retaliation. The new definition says that retaliation “may include… disclosing an employee’s personnel files because he or she has opposed any practices forbidden under this article or because he or she has filed a complaint, testified or assisted in any proceeding under this article…”
In other words, if you were engaged in a protected activity and your employer, in an attempt to harm you, disclosed some or all of your personnel file, then that’s against the law now. The range of protected activities can be anything from, say, testifying in a coworker’s age discrimination case to filing your own formal sexual harassment claim to complaining to your supervisor about race discrimination in your work area to assisting a colleague in their sexual orientation discrimination case. These are just a few examples.