Have you been denied unemployment?

Our firm is often contacted by people have lost their jobs and been denied unemployment because of an administrative law judge (ALJ) who implicitly confuses conduct that might provide “good cause” for termination with “misconduct” as defined in chapter 50.04 RCW. Clearly, employee misconduct, which would disqualify a worker from receiving unemployment benefits, would typically also create good cause for termination, but the converse is not necessarily true. An employer’s decision to discharge an employee is distinct from the Employment Security Department’s decision to grant or deny unemployment benefits. The distinction between the two decisions, one about discharge, the other about misconduct disqualifying a claimant from benefits, has been insisted upon by the Washington Supreme Court. Tapper v. State Employment Sec. Dept., 122 Wn.2d 397, 412, 858 P.2d 494 (1993) (“The question of discharge is independent of the question of misconduct... Boeing may or may not have been justified, as a matter of employment law or good business judgment, in terminating [the claimant], but those questions are not before the court. [The claimant’s] supervisor may or may not have handled the problems with [the claimant] as sensitively or capably as another supervisor might have, but that question is also not before the court. The only issue in this case is whether the facts surrounding the discharge…meet the test for misconduct....” (Emphasis added). ).When we are retained by a discharged employee to seek judicial review of a denial of unemployment benefits based on alleged misconduct, but where the discharge precipitating conduct was really mistake, inadvertence, or inability, we usually expect to prevail in Superior Court. But, in such cases where an employee is initially denied unemployment benefits for reasons other than actual misconduct, even though misconduct has been alleged, their chance of having the initial denial reversed, and thereby avoiding the need for pursuing costly and lengthy judicial review, are much greater when they obtain counsel as soon as they receive the first denial of benefits notice.