In a recent decision, the Arizona Court of Appeals considered the claim that an employee was discharged for disclosing allegedly unsafe conditions in violation of the Arizona Employment Protection Act (AEPA), A.R.S. § 23-1501. The court considered whether each disclosure by the employee qualified as protected activity and concluded that the reported violation of the Arizona Administrative Code (AAC) could constitute protected activity, while the others, including a reported violation of state regulations of the National Electric Safety Code (NESC), were not protected activity.
In Seballos v. Freeport-McMoran, Inc., 2023 WL 5624716 (Ariz. Ct. App. Aug. 31, 2023), the court evaluated an employee’s retaliatory termination claim under the AEPA, which authorizes a cause of action against an employer that terminates an employee for reporting a reasonable belief that the employer “has violated, is violating or will violate the Constitution of Arizona or the statutes of [the] state.”
The plaintiff argued that the defendants terminated him for complaining about unsafe conditions, including “problems with [the] [d]efendant’s electrical grid,” which he asserted he reasonably believed violated the NESC. The court held that this disclosure did not fall under the scope of the AEPA “because [the plaintiff] ha[d] neither alleged nor established that he disclosed an Arizona constitutional or statutory violation.” Specifically, the court noted that the Arizona Corporation Commission adopted...
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