New Jersey Employment Lawyer Blog

The New Jersey Supreme Court on Thursday gave employers, and management-side employment lawyers, a victory by putting a limit on suits by fired employees under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination based on post-discharge retaliatory conduct. The Court stated that the "limitations clock begins to run on a discrete retaliatory act, such as discharge, on the date on which the act takes place." The unanimous New Jersey Court reversed an appeals court that had allowed a suit under the "continuing violation doctrine" even though more than two years had passed since the first retaliatory act. Although "a discrete post-discharge act of retaliation is independently actionable even if it does not relate to present or future employment," that timely claim "does not sweep in a prior untimely discrete act which the victim knew or ought to have known gave rise to a retaliation claim," Justice Virginia Long wrote in Roa v. LAFE, A-72-08.