The Rise of Employee Lawsuits: What HR Should Be Doing Now to Protect Your Organization
Employment litigation is spiking, not because employers have suddenly become careless, but because the legal landscape has shifted, while workplace expectations kept changing at the same time.
In a survey of more than 400 U.S. general counsel and in-house litigation leaders by Norton Rose Fulbright, employment law claims ranked as the second most common litigation category overall for the year ahead. The types of claims employers face are also shifting toward harder-to-predict territory.
Workplace Harassment and Discrimination Claims
Discrimination and harassment remain the single largest source of employment litigation exposure. Forty-seven percent of Norton Rose Fulbright’s survey respondents named these issues as a top risk for 2026, even as the overall rate of traditional discrimination claims edges down. What's changing is the shape of the claims themselves.
A 2025 Supreme Court ruling, Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services, clarified that reverse discrimination claims no longer face a heightened legal standard, and survey respondents expect that shift to drive a rise in reverse discrimination lawsuits going forward.
Disability accommodation claims tell a similar story of escalation. Forty-two percent of respondents flagged disability accommodations as a major litigation risk this year, a sharp jump from prior years. Requests for remote work and mental health accommodations have grown since the pandemic, and employer pushback on those requests is starting to generate its own wave of disputes.
Retaliation and Wrongful Termination Risks
Wrongful termination is the newest name on the list. It didn't rank among top litigation risks in the prior year's survey, but 37 percent of respondents now cited it as a likely driver of employment litigation over the next twelve months.
The pattern behind that number matters more than the number itself. Terminations rarely trigger a lawsuit in isolation. They tend to follow an accommodation request, a protected leave, or an internal complaint that was already on record before the termination happened, which means routine staffing decisions now carry legal risk that wasn't there a few years ago.
The financial stakes attached to these claims have also changed. Employers describe growing concern over what the legal industry calls nuclear verdicts, jury awards exceeding $10 million that bear little relationship to the economic facts of the case.
For example, in November 2025, a Los Angeles jury returned a verdict that was subsequently reduced to $32.2 million for disability discrimination against an employer. That case highlights how jurors are sometimes willing to award significant damages when they perceive a pattern of employer disregard, a risk employers everywhere are watching.
Taken together, these trends point to a common thread. The claims most likely to grow are the ones rooted in how an organization handles its people day to day: how it responds to accommodation requests, how it documents decisions, and how seriously it takes complaints before they escalate.
Building a Culture of Accountability, Compliance and Support
Legal risk starts in the everyday interactions that either build trust or erode it, long before any formal complaint is filed. Organizations that treat culture as a compliance tool, not just a morale initiative, tend to catch small problems before they turn into something bigger.
Strengthening Employee Trust to Prevent Escalation
Employees who trust that a concern will be taken seriously are far more likely to raise it internally, through a manager, HR, or another established channel, before looking outside the organization for resolution. That trust isn't built through a single policy or a single training session; it's built through consistency. Leaders who follow through on what they say, complaint processes that produce visible outcomes, and a track record of treating similar situations the same way regardless of who's involved all help build employee trust.
The absence of that trust is where legal risk can concentrate. An employee who doesn't believe a complaint will go anywhere has little incentive to file it internally first. When that same employee eventually does raise the issue, whether to a regulator, an attorney, or a courtroom, the organization is often facing a claim about something it never had the chance to address.
Monitoring Workplace Culture to Reduce Liability
Trust also needs a feedback loop. Organizations that only learn about a cultural problem when a formal complaint or lawsuit arrives are, by definition, monitoring too late. Regular, low-stakes ways of surfacing concerns, like anonymous surveys, skip-level check-ins, and exit interviews that ask real questions instead of formalities, give leadership a chance to spot patterns before they harden into legal exposure.
This kind of monitoring works best when it's paired with a willingness to act on what it turns up. A survey that identifies a pattern of complaints about a particular manager or department, and then produces no visible response, tends to erode the same trust it was meant to protect. The goal isn't data collection for its own sake. It's giving the organization enough advance notice to step in while a problem is still cultural, not yet a legal matter.
How HR Can Proactively Reduce Legal Risk
Culture sets the tone, but HR is where that tone gets translated into practice. The organizations that stay out of court aren't necessarily the ones with the fewest problems. They're the ones whose HR function is equipped to catch and resolve issues before legal exposure builds.
Training Leaders to Handle Complaints Effectively
Manager training is one of the most consistently underused defenses against employment litigation. According to SHRM, training new employees during onboarding, paired with regular refreshers, helps prevent claims under Title VII, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. The reverse is also true. Outdated or lapsed training creates the exact vulnerabilities plaintiffs' attorneys look for.
- Joyce Chastain, an HR consultant with the employment law firm The Krizner Group, points to a rise in age-related claims that often trace back to something a supervisor said rather than a documented performance issue, comments like asking an older employee whether they've thought about retirement, offered casually, with no idea it could become evidence.
- Luther Wright Jr., an attorney with Ogletree Deakins, makes a related point: pausing training programs, even temporarily, opens gaps that plaintiffs' counsel is quick to exploit during discovery. Brief, practical training modules that managers can complete in short sessions are proving effective at closing exactly this kind of gap, giving supervisors the specific language and judgment they need in the moments that matter most.
Creating Clear Documentation and Communication Policies
Training only holds up if there's a paper trail behind it. Consistent, well-organized documentation gives HR a factual record to stand on and gives employees confidence that similar situations are managed the same way across the organization. In practice, that record typically includes:
- Written performance reviews, dated and specific rather than vague.
- A documented account of every complaint investigation, including who was interviewed and what was found.
- Disciplinary decisions tied to a clear, consistently applied policy.
- A record of accommodation requests and how each one was resolved.
None of this needs to be elaborate to be effective. What matters is that it exists, that it's specific, and that it's applied the same way regardless of who's involved.
That documentation matters even when a case never reaches a courtroom. Employment attorneys who defend these cases at trial note that juries respond to reasonableness. Written anti-harassment policies, documented investigations, consistent coaching, and active training programs all signal that an organization acted in good faith, even when a specific decision is later disputed.
An employer that can show its process, not just its outcome, is in a fundamentally different position than one that's reconstructing what happened after the fact.
The Role of Employee Assistance Programs (EAP) in Conflict Prevention
Even in a workplace with strong leadership and clear channels, some conflicts are hard to raise internally, not because employees don't trust the organization, but because the conflict involves the very person they'd normally report to, or because the issue feels too personal to bring to a manager at all.
Using EAP SErvices to Address Workplace Conflict Early
An Employee Assistance Program solves a different problem than culture-building does. It doesn't depend on an employee's trust in a specific manager or process. It works because it sits entirely outside the reporting structure: a professionally trained counselor, bound by confidentiality, who has no stake in the org chart and no relationship to protect. That structural independence matters most in exactly the situations where internal trust is weakest, a conflict with a direct supervisor, a concern about retaliation, a problem an employee isn't ready to name to anyone at the company.
This is also where EAP counselors bring something a manager typically can't: training to recognize when a workplace conflict is tangled up with a mental health or substance use issue that needs a different kind of response than a policy conversation. That diagnostic skill often catches problems that would otherwise surface only after they'd already become a formal complaint.
The research on outcomes backs up the value of that access. A peer-reviewed study using 2016 and 2017 data from a federal employee assistance program serving more than 900,000 workers found that absenteeism scores fell nearly 70 percent among employees who used the program, with presenteeism improving by more than 20 percent each year. Every measured outcome in the study was statistically significant.
The Impact of Burnout and mental Health on Legal Exposure
Burnout rarely shows up in a lawsuit by name, but it's frequently present in the background of one. An employee running on empty is more likely to snap at a coworker, misread a manager's intent, or reach a breaking point that turns a fixable situation into a formal complaint. Chronic stress narrows the room people have for patience and perspective, and workplaces are not exempt from that effect.
What makes this a genuine legal exposure issue, rather than just a morale one, is that burnout increasingly intersects with protected categories. An employee whose mental health has deteriorated to the point of needing accommodation, or whose stress-related absence gets treated as a performance problem instead of a medical one, can turn a wellness gap into an ADA or disability discrimination claim.
A counselor trained to distinguish ordinary work stress from a clinical issue is positioned to catch that distinction before HR or a manager, without that training, gets it wrong.
How Ulliance EAP Services Support Risk Mitigation and Employee Well-being
Ulliance delivers this kind of support through a model built around face-to-face counseling and life coaching, not a purely virtual or self-service platform. That distinction matters specifically because of what makes an EAP effective in the first place: an employee is far more likely to open up to a counselor who feels like a real person than to a phone tree or an app.
Ulliance also provides direct management consultation and crisis response services, which extend the value beyond individual counseling. When a workplace conflict has already surfaced, HR teams get an experienced partner to consult, not just a policy to point to. Combined with training and organizational effectiveness consulting, Ulliance's role is to be the specific, human version of the mechanism described above, not a generic add-on benefit.
FAQS: Employee Lawsuits and HR
What is considered wrongful termination?
Wrongful termination occurs when an employee is fired for a reason that violates federal, state, or local law, such as retaliation for reporting harassment, discrimination based on a protected characteristic, or termination that breaches an employment contract. It does not simply mean an unfair firing. Even in at-will employment states, termination becomes legally risky when it follows closely after a protected activity, like filing a complaint or requesting a disability accommodation.
How can HR reduce the risk of employee lawsuits?
HR can reduce lawsuit risk through consistent manager training, thorough documentation of performance and disciplinary decisions, and clear complaint-handling procedures that employees trust. Regular refresher training closes gaps that plaintiffs' attorneys often target. Documented, consistent decision-making gives the organization a factual record if a claim is filed. Proactive culture monitoring, through surveys or check-ins, helps surface problems before they escalate into formal complaints.
What is the difference between a workplace complaint and a legal claim?
A workplace complaint is an internal report to a manager, HR, or another company channel about a problem, such as harassment, unfair treatment, or a policy violation. A legal claim is a formal accusation filed with a government agency or court alleging a violation of law. Most complaints never become legal claims, but an unresolved or poorly handled complaint significantly increases the odds that an employee looks outside the organization for resolution.
How does an Employee Assistance Program help prevent workplace conflict?
An Employee Assistance Program gives employees a confidential channel to address personal and workplace stress before it turns into conflict. By offering counseling and guidance outside of formal HR channels, an EAP helps employees process disagreements, manage burnout, and seek support earlier, often resolving issues informally that might otherwise develop into complaints or claims. This early intervention benefits both employee wellbeing and organizational risk management.
Why are reverse discrimination claims expected to increase?
A 2025 Supreme Court ruling in Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services eliminated the heightened legal standard that previously applied to reverse discrimination claims, meaning plaintiffs bringing these claims now face the same standard as any other discrimination case. Employment law experts anticipate this change will make it easier to bring reverse discrimination lawsuits, and survey data already shows employers naming this as a growing litigation concern for 2026.
When you partner with Ulliance, our Life Advisor Consultants are always just a phone call away to teach ways to enhance your work/life balance and increase your happiness. The Ulliance Life Advisor Employee Assistance Program can help employees and employers come closer to a state of total well-being.
Investing in the right EAP or Wellness Program to support your employees will help them and help you. Visit https://ulliance.com/ or call 866-648-8326.
The Ulliance Employee Assistance Program can address the
following issues:
• Stress about work or job performance
• Crisis in the workplace
• Conflict resolution at work or in one’s personal life
• Marital or relationship problems
• Child or elder care concerns
• Financial worries
• Mental health problems
• Alcohol/substance abuse
• Grief
• Interpersonal conflicts
• AND MORE!
References:
10 Employment Law Risks HR Must Track in 2026; HRMorning
https://www.hrmorning.com/news/new-employment-law-trends-to-watch/
California's Nuclear Verdict Era: Strategic Imperatives for Employers and In-House Counsel; Fox Rothschild LLP
https://californiaemploymentlaw.foxrothschild.com/2026/01/articles/employment-litigation/californias-nuclear-verdict-era-strategic-imperatives-for-employers-and-in-house-counsel/
EEOC Highlights Record-Breaking Results in Agency Reports; U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
https://www.eeoc.gov/newsroom/eeoc-highlights-record-breaking-results-agency-reports
Mental Health Care at Work: Roundup of Recent Research on Employee Assistance Programs; The Journalist's Resource (Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center); Clark Merrefield
https://journalistsresource.org/health/employee-assistance-programs-mental-health/
Reduce Your Organization's Legal Risk Through Workforce Planning; SHRM; Allen Smith, J.D.
https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/employment-law-compliance/reduce-organizations-legal-risk-through-workforce-planning