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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm the OP.  Thanks for the replies.  Is it normal for the supervisor to refuse to tell her why she was fired?  [/quote]

If you tell them why, then that opens it up for debate and lawsuits.

How long had she been there? In many states, even a "protected class" can be fired in the first X months for no reason at all.[/quote]
A person who is a member of a protected class can be fired.  [b]The REASON for the firing cannot be the protected class status, no matter when it happens[/b].[/quote]

True, But everyone is in a protected class, really. We all have a race and a gender.. However, if she’s a minority, the comment “the face doesn’t fit” would be fodder for concern.[/quote][b]

[/b]If she is a woman, which she is, the comment "the face doesn't fit" is cause for concern.

[/quote]

she was having problems with two older women, so not sure about that.  They were kept on, so doesn't seem like any animus toward women.[/quote]

Actually, I've heard from equal opportunity employment lawyers that it does not matter if the person making the sexist comment is part of the protected class or is nice to other people in the protected class.  If the comment they made or the reason they give for the adverse action is deemed based on sex, then it is an issue.  For example, if a supervisor says something sexist to me but treats other women in the office just fine, the comments he made to me are still sexual harassment.

So if the reason her boss is firing her can be construed as something tied to her being a woman (i.e., she doesn't have the right "look"), that's an issue.

If I were OP's niece, I would have raised it then and there with the lawyer.  Maybe it's just me, but I don't think two month's severance is much.  I just don't think it's enough in that situation to silence me from asking questions.

But maybe that's just me.  Sure, employers can fire "at will" employees for any reason they like.  But there's a reason they want employees to sign nondisclosure forms -- because they know there are risks.  And in a situation where there was no clear cause for firing, the performance reviews were excellent, and the boss wouldn't give me anything other than I don't have the right "face," there's no way I'm signing away my rights.

This should be a learning experience for OP's niece.  When the boss told her she was being fired, the niece was well within her rights to ask why,  her performance reviews were good, there wasn't any incident or adverse event, she should have gone out to her car or to the bathroom and googled an employment lawyer on her smartphone and made a call.

At the very least, she should have some clarification that she's not being fired for cause.  That matters.

The other option is that she could have gone to HR.  I'm not saying any of this would have saved her job, but it might have given her better standing (perhaps either delayed the action or changed the nature of the termination from being fired to being laid off, which matters because future employers usually ask on online applications if you've ever been fired).

[/quote]

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