Kansas: Former University Employee Need Not Exhaust Administrative Remedies Before Filing Retaliatory Discharge Case

The Supreme Court of Kansas, affirming an unpublished decision of a panel of the state’s Court of Appeals, held that a former probationary employee had properly stated a claim for retaliatory discharge where she alleged that her former employer, Kansas State University, knew she was suffering from ill health as a result of the working conditions it provided and that because of this ill health, and in anticipation of her possible workers compensation claim, the University ended her employment. She was not required to exhaust her administrative remedies under the Kansas Judicial Review Act (K.S.A. 77–601 et seq.). The Court stressed that torts are outside the purview of the KJRA. Retaliatory discharge is a tort, particularly when an employee has been fired because of a potential workers compensation claim.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is the co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See Platt v. Kan. State Univ., 2016 Kan. LEXIS 450 (September 16, 2016)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 104.07.

Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law