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WRA was able to help get major concessions on legislation that would have allowed discrimination lawsuits seeking unlimited punitive damages in state courts.
Thanks to WRA members, who lobbied state legislators at WRA Restaurant Lobby Day and followed up with more than 400 emails to lawmakers, the bill was amended to address the concerns of small employers. These changes that make it unlikely that the bill will have a negative impact on employers who endeavor to treat all their employees fairly. Without these critical changes in the bill, this law would no doubt have resulted in an increased number of discrimination lawsuits against employers.
Amendments by bill authors Sen. Dave Hansen (D-Green Bay), and Rep. Christine Sinicki (D-Milwaukee) did the following:
- Put limits on the punitive damages that will be allowed. Maximum punitive damage awards would vary according to the size of the business. Maximum punitive damages for a business with 16 to 100 employees would be $50,000; 101 to 200 employees, $100,000; 201 to 500 employees, $200,000; more than 500 employees, $300,000. Punitive damages will not be allowed against companies with 15 or fewer employees. These limits will allow insurance companies to better assess their risk, and will hopefully keep premium increases significantly lower that they would have been with unlimited damages.
- Required a discrimination complaint to show proof of malice or intentional disregard of an individual's rights before the case could go to court. If the discrimination was not necessarily intentional, then the claim would be handled through the current administrative law procedure already in place at the Department of Workforce Development (DWD).
- Eliminated a 10% surcharge on all court awards that would have been paid to DWD, and would have unintentionally provided an incentive for DWD to forward more claims to circuit court.
The bill, 2009 Senate Bill 20, was signed into law by Governor Doyle on June 8, 2009.
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