Last March, we wrote about a surprising ruling in which the Massachusetts Appeals Court concluded employers in the state aren’t legally prohibited from firing employees for exercising their right to file a rebuttal in response to a negative document placed in their personnel file. The decision wasn’t unanimous, the dissenting opinion was persuasive, and the case attracted the attention of numerous legal organizations, which urged the state’s highest court, the Supreme Judicial Court (SJC), to review the appeals court’s ruling. Therefore, we cautioned employers to wait for a final decision before disciplining or terminating an employee based on a rebuttal.
