Getting fired days after reporting an injury feels like punishment, and often it is. Minnesota is an at-will state, so your employer can end your job for almost any reason or no reason at all.
However, it’s a different story if you’ve filed a workers’ comp claim. Firing you for filing a comp claim or for the restrictions your doctor wrote is against the law.
Two separate statutes protect injured workers. A case involving wrongful termination after injury in Minneapolis can fall under either one or both.
In short, you may have a claim. In fact, you might have two.
Read on to learn more.
Your Firing Was Illegal Only if the Reason Was Your Injury
At-will employment moves the question from whether your employer could fire you too why they did. Your job now is to figure out which category your termination falls into, and Minnesota law draws that line in three places.
Retaliation and Obstruction Both Count
Firing someone for seeking workers’ compensation benefits creates civil liability, and so does threatening to fire them. You do not have to lose the job for the law to apply. Intentionally obstructing a worker who is trying to get benefits carries the same consequence.
Damages include any reduction in benefits the retaliation caused, your costs, reasonable attorney fees, and punitive damages of up to three times the compensation benefit at stake. None of that is reduced by the comp benefits you are already owed.
Threats count because the law targets the pressure itself. A supervisor who suggests you drop the claim if you want to keep your hours has already crossed the line, even if you stayed employed.
Refusing You Work You Can Still Do
Your employer also cannot simply stop giving you hours. When work is available inside your physical limitations and the company refuses without reasonable cause to offer it, they owe you one year’s wages.
That claim stands on its own. Even where retaliation is hard to prove, a refusal to bring you back to suitable work has its own remedy and its own fixed amount.
When the Firing Was Lawful
Misconduct still ends employment. Stealing, threatening a coworker, or showing up impaired will cost you the job whether you filed a claim, and the injury does not shield you.
The same goes for work you could have done. Refusing tasks that sit comfortably inside your restrictions gives your employer a legitimate reason, which is why the line between lawful and retaliatory firing usually comes down to what your restrictions said.
Get a copy of every restriction slip your doctor issued. Employers sometimes describe an assignment as light duty even though it exceeds the lifting or standing limits on paper, and the written record settles that argument quickly.
A Second Claim May Exist Under the Human Rights Act
Workers’ compensation law is not the only place to look. A serious injury can leave you with a disability under Minnesota’s Human Rights Act, and that statute reaches conduct chapter 176 never touches.
Accommodation and the Employee Threshold
Employers with 15 or more workers commit an unfair employment practice when they fail to provide reasonable accommodation to a qualified employee with a disability. Accommodation means the steps needed to work around your known physical or mental limitations.
Undue hardship on the business is the only excuse. An employer who pushed you out rather than adjusting your duties, schedule, or equipment has a problem under this law even when the comp side of your case looks clean.
Accommodation covers ordinary changes: a modified schedule, a lifting limit respected, a stool at a station you used to work standing, or reassignment to a role you can perform. Companies that never discussed any of these before letting you go will struggle to explain why.
The Defense Your Employer Will Reach For
Companies facing these claims often argue that your condition made you dangerous on the job. State law does allow that defense when the disability poses a serious threat to health or safety even with accommodation in place.
Proving it falls on the employer, not on you.
One Year Is the Deadline That Catches People
Discrimination claims run on a much shorter clock than comp claims. You have one year from the date of the practice to either bring a civil action or file a charge with the commissioner of human rights.
That year pauses only while you and your employer are voluntarily working through a dispute resolution process. Otherwise, it keeps running while your comp case sits in litigation, and comp disputes regularly take longer than 12 months to resolve. Waiting for one outcome before examining the other is how workers lose the second claim without ever knowing they had it.
What Usually Points to Retaliation
Employers rarely write down the real reason. Proof tends to come from the circumstances around the firing rather than from anything anyone said out loud.
- Timing: The termination lands days or weeks after you reported the injury.
- Shifting explanations: The reason you heard in the meeting differs from the one on paper.
- A clean record until now: You have years of solid reviews, then sudden write-ups.
- Ignored restrictions: You receive assignments outside your limits, followed by discipline for not finishing them.
None of these wins a case alone. Together they build the pattern that retaliation claims are usually made of.
Get Both Claims Reviewed While the Evidence Is Fresh
Start collecting now. Your termination letter, your performance reviews, every restriction slip your doctor wrote, and any text or email mentioning your claim all become harder to obtain once you are off the payroll.
Losing your job does not end your workers’ compensation claim, and your benefits continue their own track.
Our attorneys look at the termination and the comp file together, because the same evidence often supports both. If you’re dealing with wrongful termination after injury in Minneapolis, you can have your case reviewed at our Minneapolis office without paying anything up front.
Contact our law firm today to schedule a consultation and start your comeback journey.