State Wrongful Dismissal Legislation

Abstract

The uncertainties of common law wrongful dismissal laws have resulted in proposals for comprehensive legislation codifying "just cause" and other protections for employees, culminating in the approval by the commis­ sioners on uniform state laws of a model wrongful termination from employ­ ment act. The resulting model act represents a balanced approach to rationalizing a mess. This article briefly reviews the interests involved and sketches a resulting political calculus. It identifies the basic conceptual alter­ natives for wrongful dismissal legislation and then summarizes the principal features of the new model act. The article concludes that potential constitu­ tional challenges against wrongful dismissal legislation like the model act lack merit. The uncertainties of common law wrongful dismissal law have resulted in proposals for comprehensive legislation codifying "just cause" [1] and other protections for employees [2-7]. A number of draft wrongful dismissal laws have been considered, 1 although only Montana had adopted such legislation through