Toward a Wrongful Termination Statute for California

Wrongful termination litigation based on common law principles continues to flourish in California, despite some setbacks in the courts. The author believes that while common law developments have been helpful overall, legislation is necessary to provide meaningful protection to employees within a framework of fairness to employers. This Article explores options and offers suggestions with respect to various parameters of possible legislation: the type of management decisions that would be subject to regulation; the standard by which they should be regulated; the categories of employers to which the statute should apply; the categories of employees that the statute should protect; the procedures by which the statutory standard should be enforced; the remedies that should be available for enforcement; and the extent to which the statute should foreclose lawsuits based on preexisting statutes or common law theories.