Alaska Employment Law

Mark Choate here responds to Judge Beistline’s Order dismissing his client’s Public Policy claim 

Choate writes:

I read with interest the comment [Ed.: found here] pointing to Muller v. BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc., 923 P.2d 783 (Alaska 1996), as it provides some pretty good insight as to how the Supreme Court, at least a decade ago, dealt with interpretation of Alaska Stat. 18.80.220.  I found Justice Compton’s dissent in that case particularly persuasive. 

One of the reasons Judge Beistline agreed to the certification of this question to the Alaska Supreme Court was our affirmation that irrespective of the outcome in the District Court trial, we would appeal his decision that there is no explicit public policy prohibiting the termination of an employee in order to replace that person with someone her supervisor wants to date or has a romantic interest. 

Fred Meyer in fact has an anti-nepotism policy at the department level – you can’t supervise someone you are married to or related to.  In practice, the policy is even more strictly enforced – you can’t supervise someone you’re engaged to.  The business reasons for such a policy are pretty clear cut.  The workplace shouldn’t be a prospective “dating pool” for managers and supervisors.  Employees should not worry about keeping their jobs because their manager may suddenly decide to replace them with someone more attractive, more dateable, or more potentially romantically available.

The “Sweetie Rule” as proposed by Fred Meyer is really just the logical endpoint of employment at-will.  There’s no job security, no long-term relationship, so  why not fire people because they’re not as pretty, as available, as attractive to their supervisor as a potential replacement?  That is the Brave New World of at-will employment – a world in which no one who works more than “day labor” would ever choose to be employed.  We appreciate the opportunity to get this important question to the Alaska Supreme Court.

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Ed.’s note: We’ve extended invitations to counsel for both Johnson and Fred Meyers to respond on this site.  We will post FM’s response to Mr. Choate’s, if it chooses to submit one.

10/13/07 Uppdate: Fred Meyers has declined to respond.