According to the facts described in her complaint, Kathy Minor was hired by Bostwick Laboratiries, Inc. as a medical technologist on December 24, 2007. Just a few months later, on May 6, 2008, Minor claims that she and several co-workers met with Bostwick's chief operating officer to complain that their supervisor had altered employee time sheets to reflect that they had not worked overtime when they had. The following Monday, May 12, 2008, Minor alleged that she was fired because, according to her supervisor, there was "too much conflict with [her] supervisors and the relationship just [was not] working." Minor filed suit in federal district court, alleging that she was fired in violation of the anti-retaliation provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Minor's complaint was dismissed by the district court, which held that the FLSA's anti-retaliation provision does not protect purely internal complaints about FLSA violations. Minor appealed to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Courts Review Scope of the FLSA's Anti-Retaliation Clause

As complaints of wage and hour violations increase, courts have also increasingly grappled with claims from employees that they have been subjected to retaliation for such complaints. The Fair Labor Standards Act prohibits retaliation. However, unlike the broader anti-retaliation provisions in other commonly-cited employment laws, the FLSA's clause makes it illegal to discharge or discriminate against any employee who "has filed any complaint or instituted or caused to be instituted any proceeding under or related to" the FLSA. That phrase, "filed any complaint," has been read by some to suggest that an oral complaint or a complaint made only internally, but not to the Department of Labor or some other government agency, is not sufficient to trigger the FLSA's anti-retaliation provision.

The Supreme Court settled part of this dispute last year in Kasten v. Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics Corporation, where it held that an oral complaint can fall within the FLSA's anti-retaliation provision, so long as it is "sufficiently clear and detailed for a reasonable employer to understand it, in light of both content and context, as an assertion of rights protected by the statute and a call for their protection." However, the Kasten Court expressly declined to address the question of whether the anti-retaliation provision applies to a purely internal complaint that is not "filed" with any government agency.

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