Topic

Being fired

The exit meeting, the reason letter, the last paycheck, references, and the question of whether the firing was illegal.

Duluth — An ore boat clears the Aerial Lift Bridge. Photo: Dave Madgett Photograph: Ore boat passing under the Duluth Aerial Lift Bridge.

17 guides

The guides

Just fired
Was My Firing Illegal? Minnesota's Honest Answer Is Usually No, and the Exceptions Are a Short, Specific List
Minnesota employment is at-will, so an employer may fire you for a bad reason or no reason. What it may not do is fire you for one of a small number of reasons the Legislature and the Supreme Court have taken off the table — and 'unfair' is not on that list.
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Just fired
The Exit Meeting: Every Document Handed Across the Table Runs on Its Own Statute and Its Own Clock
A separation agreement, a final paycheck, a personnel file, a termination-reason letter, company property, and an unemployment application are six different legal machines with six different deadlines. None of them requires a decision in the room.
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Just fired
The Veterans Preference Act Is a Public-Employment Discharge Statute: Two Grounds for Removal, a 30-Day Clock, and a Waiver That Takes the Rest of Your Remedies With It
Minn. Stat. § 197.46 bars a Minnesota public employer from removing a covered veteran except for incompetency or misconduct shown after a hearing. The period to request that hearing is 30 days — it was 60 until Laws 2016, ch. 189, art. 13, § 55 — and missing it waives "all other available legal remedies for reinstatement." The statute reaches no private employer.
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Just fired
Minnesota Gives You Fifteen Working Days to Demand the Reason You Were Fired — and the Duty Never Arises Unless You Ask in Writing
Minn. Stat. § 181.933 requires a Minnesota employer to state the truthful reason for an involuntary termination in writing within ten working days. It requires nothing at all until the employee makes a written request within 15 working days of the termination.
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Just fired
Minnesota's Commission Statute Is Written for Independent Contractors — If You Were an Employee, § 181.145 Is Not Your Section
Minn. Stat. § 181.145 gives a terminated commission salesperson payment in three working days, a penalty of one-fifteenth of the unpaid commissions per day, and attorney fees. Subdivision 1 defines a commission salesperson as a person "not covered by sections 181.13 and 181.14 because the person is an independent contractor." Employees paid on commission are on the other statute, and the Minnesota Court of Appeals has held it is error to mix them.
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Just fired
Misconduct Your Employer Discovers After Firing You Does Not Erase the Claim — It Cuts Off Reinstatement and Front Pay and Stops the Back-Pay Clock on the Day of Discovery
McKennon v. Nashville Banner Publishing Co. holds that after-acquired evidence of employee wrongdoing is no defense to liability under the ADEA, and that the employer must first prove the wrongdoing would in fact have caused a discharge. What it does is limit the remedy. Whether a Minnesota court applies the same limits to a Human Rights Act or Whistleblower Act claim was not decided by any decision retrieved for this page.
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Just fired
Your Last Paycheck in Minnesota: The 24-Hour Clock Does Not Start Until You Demand It in Writing
Minn. Stat. § 181.13 makes a discharged employee's earned wages due immediately on written demand, with the employer in default 24 hours later and a penalty of average daily earnings for up to 15 days. An employer may not hold that check hostage to an unreturned laptop.
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Just fired
Minnesota Makes the Employer Prove You Could Have Earned the Money — the Duty to Mitigate Is a Defense the Employer Carries, Not an Element You Have to Disprove
Zeller v. Prior Lake Public Schools puts the burden of proving mitigation on the party whose wrongful act caused the breach. Schisler and Feges set out when refusing an offered job does and does not reduce damages. The Human Rights Act's remedy sections do not use the word at all, and Minnesota's unemployment statute handles the overlap between back pay and benefits in its own subdivision.
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Just fired
Quitting Counts as Being Fired in Minnesota Only if the Employer Meant to Make You Quit — Intolerable Conditions Alone Are Half the Test
Henry v. Independent School District #625 states Minnesota's constructive discharge standard in two elements: objectively intolerable working conditions, and employer intent to force the resignation, which can be shown either directly or by proving resignation was a reasonably foreseeable consequence. The unemployment statute does the opposite — Minn. Stat. § 268.095, subd. 5(c), says the theory of a constructive discharge does not apply there at all.
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Just fired
The Employer's Favorite Arguments Have Names — and in Minnesota Some of Them Are Adopted Law, Some Are Federal Doctrines No Retrieved Minnesota Decision Has Taken Up
Stray remarks and the reduction-in-force "additional showing" are Minnesota rules, stated in published Minnesota decisions. The same-actor inference and the honest-belief rule are argued in Minnesota courtrooms, and no published Minnesota decision retrieved for this page adopts either. This page says which is which and reports what was searched.
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Just fired
Repeating Your Employer's False Reason to a Job Interviewer Can Be the "Publication" in a Minnesota Defamation Case — but Compulsion, Foreseeability, and Proof of the Interviews Are All Required
Minnesota is one of the states that recognizes defamation by compelled self-publication. Lewis v. Equitable Life Assurance Society held that the publication element can be met by the employee's own repetition of the employer's statement — and the Supreme Court has since thrown out a claim because the employee could not document the job interviews in which he repeated it.
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Just fired
Workers' Compensation Is Not Your Only Remedy: Minn. Stat. § 176.82 Puts Two Separate Civil Claims Outside the Exclusivity Bar, and Only One of Them Reaches a Small Employer
Minn. Stat. § 176.82 gives an injured worker a civil action — subdivision 1 for discharge or threatened discharge for seeking benefits, subdivision 2 for refusing continued employment within the worker's physical limitations. Subdivision 2 does not apply to employers with 15 or fewer full-time equivalent employees. The limitation period is six years.
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Still employed
A Minnesota employer may test you only under a written policy and only in five situations — and a first positive confirmatory test is not by itself a lawful reason to fire you
Minn. Stat. § 181.951, subd. 1, bars an employer from requesting or requiring a drug or alcohol test except as the section authorizes, and only under a written policy containing everything § 181.952, subd. 1, requires. Section 181.953, subd. 10(b), then bars discharge on a first positive confirmatory test unless the employee was offered counseling or rehabilitation and refused it or failed to complete it.
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Leaving
No Minnesota Statute Creates a Right to Cash Out Unused PTO — the Answer Is in the Policy's Own Words, and the Supreme Court Said So in 2007
Minn. Stat. § 181.13 and § 181.14 fix when a final paycheck is due, not what has to be in it. The Minnesota Supreme Court held in Lee v. Fresenius Medical Care that paid time off is wages for purposes of § 181.13(a) and that the statute still does not create the entitlement. One statute does reach a promised vacation benefit — § 181.74, a gross misdemeanor — and neither it nor § 181.171 supplies a private civil action. Earned sick and safe time is answered expressly, and the answer is no.
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Leaving
Minnesota Has Its Own Health-Coverage Continuation Statute, and It Does Not Have COBRA's 20-Employee Threshold
Federal COBRA does not apply to a plan whose employers normally employed fewer than 20 employees. Minn. Stat. § 62A.17 has no headcount at all — it reaches every group insurance policy, group subscriber contract, and HMO plan within § 62A.16's scope except one covering federal-agency employees, runs 18 months or until you are covered under another group plan, whichever is shorter, at up to 102 percent, and puts a 14-day notice duty on the employer, or on the trust where a trust administers the plan, with a 60-day election window on your side. Both statutes carve out a discharge for gross misconduct.
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Leaving
A Minnesota employer may say far more in a reference than dates of employment — including documented theft, harassment, or violence — and § 181.967 is a shield for the employer, not a gag rule
Minn. Stat. § 181.967, subd. 3, lists five categories a private employer may disclose in response to a reference request, and the fifth is documented acts of violence, theft, harassment, or illegal conduct that resulted in discipline or resignation. Subdivision 2 does not forbid a bad reference; it makes one hard to sue over, on a clear-and-convincing standard.
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Bringing a claim
Your Minnesota Employer Has Seven Working Days to Hand You Your Personnel File, Free
Minn. Stat. §§ 181.960 to 181.966 give an employee — including one separated for less than a year — the right to the personnel record on written request, at no charge, and bar the employer from later using what it left out.
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Nothing on this page is advice about your job, and no article can be. If you want your own facts looked at, a Minnesota employment attorney can do that — and several of the deadlines described on this site are short enough that waiting is itself a decision.

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Being fired

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