Answer: Most employees in the state of New Hampshire are "employees at will." This means that your employment can be terminated at any time for any reason or no reason at all with or without notice. This often comes as a surprise to employees who are unaware of how precarious their employment was until their termination. The fact is, in New Hampshire an employer can terminate an employee for wearing a striped shirt. This, of course, would be absurd, incredibly unfair, and cause tremendous emotional and financial damages to an employee, but remarkably, it would not be illegal under our law. Perhaps, not surprisingly, there is no law protecting individuals with striped shirts.

The good news is there are a lot of other laws that protect employees which would make termination illegal. For example, an employee cannot be fired based upon race, religion, nationality, gender, marital status, sexual orientation, disability, pregnancy or because he or she did something that the public would applaud or refused to do something that the public would condemn. In practice, this means that employers must go through a very careful analysis for terminating employees to be sure that there is no discrimination or violation of law at the heart of the termination. A thorough analysis is necessary to determine whether an employee has been terminated in violation of the law. If you have questions, we can help. Contact Rice Law Office at (603) 528-5299.