We’ve previously written about the well-publicized guns-in-parking-lots law and the confusion over whether the law impacts the employer-employee relationship. The law was passed in 2013 to allow employees with handgun carry permits to transport and store firearms in their vehicles on an employer’s property (as long as they do so in compliance with the law).  But a question important to employers remained unsettled:  Is an employer who discharges an employee for carrying a gun in compliance with the law subject to a retaliatory discharge lawsuit?
 
The Tennessee General Assembly has now answered the question with a new law passed yesterday.  The new law provides a retaliatory discharge cause of action for any employee who is discharged or subject to an adverse employment action "solely for transporting or storing a firearm or firearm ammunition in an employer parking area in a manner consistent" with the guns-in-parking-lots law.  The law provides for the recovery of economic damages (generally, lost wages) and the employee’s attorneys’ fees and litigation costs.  This law obviously further erodes Tennessee’s at-will employment doctrine by creating another “protected class” of employees.
 
Assuming that the Governor signs the bill into law, it will become effective July 1, 2015, and will apply to employee terminations after that date.