What Are the Top Employer Errors Behind Wrongful Termination?

Written by Timothy Hawks, Hawks Quindel, S.C.  |  Reviewed September 2026

This article is provided for general information and does not constitute legal advice. If you believe you were wrongfully terminated, consider speaking with a licensed employment attorney in your state about the specifics of your situation.

Losing a job is disorienting even when you saw it coming. It’s worse when the reasons behind it don’t add up, or when the timing lines up a little too neatly with something you did that the law is supposed to protect — reporting harassment, taking medical leave, filing a workers’ compensation claim. The mistakes below show up again and again in wrongful termination cases. Recognizing them is often the first step toward knowing whether what happened to you was legal.

Unlawful Discrimination

Employers cannot base a termination decision on a protected characteristic — race, color, sex, disability, age, religion, national origin, or other classes protected under federal law and, in Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Fair Employment Act. That protection applies whether the discrimination is explicit or buried under a stated reason like “restructuring” or “not a culture fit.” Discrimination claims rarely come with a smoking gun; they’re usually built from patterns — inconsistent discipline, comments tied to a protected trait, or a stated reason that doesn’t match how similarly situated coworkers were treated. An employment attorney handling workplace discrimination claims looks at exactly that kind of pattern.

Retaliation in the Workplace

Retaliation is one of the most common employer mistakes behind a wrongful termination claim, and according to the EEOC, it’s consistently the single most frequent basis for discrimination charges filed nationwide. An employer cannot fire, demote, or otherwise punish an employee for reporting discrimination or harassment, participating in an investigation, or exercising a legal right such as taking leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). Retaliation doesn’t always look like an outright firing — cutting someone’s hours, stripping their responsibilities, or suddenly documenting problems that were never raised before can all be part of the same pattern.

Breaches of Contract and the Limits of At-Will Employment

Wisconsin, like most states, follows the employment-at-will doctrine: absent a contract saying otherwise, an employer can generally end employment for any reason or no reason at all. But “at-will” isn’t the same as “no limits.” Wisconsin courts recognize a narrow public policy exception, first established in Brockmeyer v. Dun & Bradstreet, Inc., that prohibits firing an employee for refusing to violate the law. Separately, federal and state statutes — discrimination law, the FMLA, workers’ compensation retaliation protections — apply regardless of at-will status and don’t depend on having a written contract at all. And for employees who do have an employment contract, terminating them before the agreed term ends, or withholding compensation and benefits the contract promised, can support a straightforward breach of contract claim on top of any statutory one.

Inadequate Documentation

Employers are expected to document performance issues, warnings, and the reasoning behind a termination before the decision is made — not after. When a company can’t produce that paper trail, or when the file was clearly built after the fact to justify a decision already made, it becomes one of the more telling signs in a wrongful termination case. Contemporaneous documentation is one of the strongest things an employer can have in its defense; the absence of it is often just as revealing.

What to Do If You Recognize These Errors

If your termination involved one or more of these red flags, timing matters. Discrimination and retaliation claims generally have to go through an agency first — the Wisconsin Equal Rights Division or the EEOC — and both agencies enforce filing deadlines that can be as short as a few hundred days from the date of the adverse action. Waiting to see how you feel about it in a few months can mean losing the right to bring a claim at all.

In the meantime, do for yourself what a well-run employer should have done: write down what happened while it’s still fresh, save any emails, performance reviews, or messages that are relevant, and note the timing between anything you did — reporting a problem, requesting leave, filing a claim — and the actions your employer took afterward. An employment attorney can help you sort out which of these errors, if any, apply to your situation and what the applicable deadlines are.

A Recent Example From the Firm’s Case Work

One illustration of how these protections play out came in a case handled by Hawks Quindel attorneys Aaron Halstead, Lili Behm, and Aaron Bibb on behalf of a client identified as Sarah, a lead teacher at a Wisconsin school for children with special needs. After Sarah returned from FMLA leave following a workplace injury, the school did not reinstate her to her prior role — instead, it reassigned her to a position with far fewer responsibilities, while leaving her pay and benefits unchanged. A federal court ruled in Sarah’s favor, and in 2022 the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed on appeal, holding that a significant reduction in job responsibilities alone can violate the FMLA, even without any cut to pay or benefits, and ordering the school to pay Sarah’s attorney fees. The case is a useful reminder that “wrongful termination” isn’t always as clean as being fired outright — a demotion in substance, dressed up as a lateral move, can carry the same legal exposure. Details of the case, shared with the client’s permission, are available on the firm’s news and victories page.

The Short Version

Discrimination, retaliation, breach of contract, and undocumented decision-making are the errors that show up most often behind wrongful termination claims. None of them require a smoking gun to prove — they’re usually established through timing, inconsistency, and a paper trail (or the lack of one). If your termination involved any of these patterns, the clock on filing a claim is often shorter than people expect, so getting an early read from an employment attorney is worth doing sooner rather than later.

Sources & Authorities

Timothy Hawks

Timothy Hawks is Of Counsel at Hawks Quindel, S.C., where he has represented Wisconsin workers and labor unions for decades. A graduate of Georgetown University and the University of Iowa College of Law, he previously served on the staff of the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission. He is a contributing author to the treatise Wisconsin Employment Law, an adjunct professor at Marquette Law School, and a past chair of the State Bar of Wisconsin's Labor and Employment Law Section.

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