Dallas Employment Trial Lawyer Cassidy Monska
If you’re experiencing discrimination or harassment at work, your first instinct may be to tell someone, but how you report it can make a significant difference in how your complaint is handled and whether you’re protected under the law.
Why Reporting Is Essential
Dallas Employment Trail Lawyer Ellie Johnston
October is here—pumpkins on porches, costumes in the stores, and a chill in the air. But for many Texas employees, the real scare isn’t haunted houses or ghost stories. It’s the fear of speaking up at work. When employees exercise their rights—whether requesting a disability accommodation or reporting unfair treatment—they too often face retaliation. And that’s more frightening than anything you’ll find in a corn maze.
In this post, we’ll look at how disability rights and workplace retaliation intersect, what protections the law gives Texas employees, and what steps you can take if your employer crosses the line.
Rachel Bethel – Trial Attorney
Workplace issues can start subtly: a passive-aggressive comment, a suspicious change in workload, or a shift in how management treats you. Many employees hope these problems will work themselves out or go away eventually. However, waiting too long to get legal guidance can make things worse & potentially limit your options later on.
Whether you’re facing discrimination, retaliation, or a hostile work environment, speaking with an employment attorney early in the process can be one of the smartest moves you make.
Dallas Employment Trail Lawyer Ellie Johnston
Every employee deserves a safe workplace. Whether you work in construction, health care, retail, or an office, your employer has a legal duty to provide an environment free from known hazards. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) was created to enforce these rules and protect employees when companies cut corners. But too often, workers hesitate to speak up because they fear retaliation.
The truth is that retaliation is common—and it’s illegal. Workers who raise safety concerns, request inspections, or file OSHA complaints are protected by federal law. Retaliation can take many forms: sudden termination, reduced hours, demotion, harassment, or even blacklisting that makes it harder to find work in the future. These actions are meant to intimidate, but OSHA’s whistleblower provisions exist precisely to stop employers from silencing their workers.
Dallas Employment Trial Lawyer Deontae Wherry
Picture this: you are at work when someone hands you a subpoena. You did not ask for it, and maybe you do not even want to be involved, but now you are legally required to show up in court or provide documents. You want to do the right thing, so you comply with the subpoena. But when you get back to work, your boss is not happy. Maybe he/she cut your hours, your responsibilities change, or, worst of all, he/she terminates your job.
If that sounds unfair, that’s because it is. And, in Texas, it is also illegal.
Just at the start of September 2025, two different Texas public universities have fired professors as a result of their speech. Texas State University explicitly fired Professor Thomas Alter because of a speech he gave at a conference of socialists, and Texas A&M University fired Professor Melissa McCoul after a student, in a controversial viral video, confronted her about what she was supposedly teaching about gender in her classroom. While both of these events just happened and it is hard to say what might eventually become of these cases, they each appear to set up a possible confrontation between the universities and their professors’ regarding free speech rights.
And there have been many such confrontations in recent years. In July and August 2025, for instance, the Third Circuit and Seventh Circuit Courts of Appeals each issued decisions addressing whether schools and universities could legally fire some employees over their (politically right wing) speech. The point of this article isn’t to dissect these any of those cases—much less the merits of the underlying speech—but to discuss what legal standard courts in the Fifth Circuit (which includes Texas) might apply should disputes over these sorts of terminations go forward.
The First Amendment prevents federal and state governments from infringing on the rights of people to engage in free speech, but that is not an absolute right. Nonetheless, public employees are protected against termination for engaging in speech protected by the First Amendment. The standard for this has been set out by the U.S. Supreme Court in a number of cases. To prove that their speech was protected, the public employee must show that they spoke (1) as a citizen (2) on a matter of public concern, and that (3) the public employer did not otherwise have an adequate justification for treating the public employee differently than any other member of the public saying the same thing.
Dallas Employment Trial Lawyer Cassidy Monska
Retaliation is one of the most frequently alleged forms of workplace misconduct in Texas. Although the law protects employees who assert their rights, many still face adverse consequences after reporting discrimination, requesting accommodations, or participating in investigations. Unfortunately, retaliation can be subtle, delayed, or disguised as ordinary business decisions.
What Is Workplace Retaliation?
Dallas Employment Trial Lawyer Deontae Wherry
In the dynamic world of business, having the right legal team can mean the difference between success and setbacks. When it comes to protecting your interests and navigating complex legal challenges, nothing beats the expertise and specialization of board-certified employment attorneys. Here’s why investing in a board-certified employment attorney is advantageous for you:
Summary: This article explores some of the nuances of the Surface Transportation Assistance Act’s anti-retaliation provisions, and how they can help you as a transportation employee.
The federal Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Act provides protections for employees who blow the whistle on safety problems on the job. However, those protections do not cover every safety concern or industry, and employees have an extremely short, 30-day window in which to file a retaliation claim with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
Fortunately, OSHA also enforces various other more specific whistleblower laws. One important example is the Surface Transportation Assistance Act of 1982. Among other things, that law provided broader protections for a narrower set of people: workers who drive commercial vehicles (including contractors), mechanics on commercial vehicles or employees who otherwise directly affect the safety of those vehicles, and employees who handle freight.
Suppose both husband and wife, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, have worked for Democan in the marketing department for 15 years. The couple loves their job because they can help their pastor with his re-election campaign. For most of their career, the couple has reported to the marketing director, Joe Abbott. Mr. Abbott retired seven months ago. Democan then hired Donald Paxton as the new Marketing Director.
Since his first day, Mr. Paxton has had a crush on Mrs. Johnson. Mr. Paxton waits until Mrs. Johnson is alone then he approaches her in the backroom and begins to caress her body. Mrs. Johnson tells Mr. Paxton to stop as his actions were unwelcomed and made her uncomfortable. Mr. Paxton continued with his actions, and Mrs. Johnson continued to ask him to stop. Mrs. Johnson had enough, so she engaged in protected activity by filing multiple sexual harassment complaints with human resources. Human resources did nothing. By this point, Mrs. Johnson feared going to work, so she decided that her only option was to file a charge of discrimination (“charge”) with United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). After she filed with the EEOC, she notified human resources and Mr. Paxton that she formally filed a charge with EEOC.
Mr. Paxton called Mr. Johnson into his office and asked Mr. Johnson if he would instruct his wife to withdraw her charge of discrimination. Mr. Johnson refused. The following day, Mr. Paxton wrote up both Mr. and Mrs. Johnson for insubordination. They asked Mr. Paxton how they were insubordinate, and Mr. Paxton had no response. The following week, Mr. Paxton terminated Mr. Johnson for eating chips at his desk. Mr. Johnson does not believe Mr. Paxton terminated him for eating chips because his other colleagues were eating chips at their desk as well. Mr. Johnson believes that he was terminated because his wife filed a charge.
Dallas Employment Lawyer Blog