By Kate Acheson
In Rogers v. Georgia Dep’t of Corr., a federal district court in Georgia considered whether an internal investigator’s threat of termination and presentation of a pre-written resignation letter is sufficient to show that a resignation was coerced. The court found that, although the knowledge of impending discipline alone is not enough to make a resignation involuntary, the threat and pre-written letter was enough evidence to possibly persuade a jury that the employee’s termination was not voluntary.
The employee in question, Cynthia Rogers, worked as a correctional officer for the Georgia Department of Corrections, at Wilcox State Prison from 1999, through December, 2008. She regularly commuted to work with a friend and civilian employee of the prison, Stephanie Frederick.
In 2008, Rogers was assigned to work in the same area as Frederick – the prison warehouse. Shortly thereafter, in July of 2008, it was discovered that Frederick was having a personal relationship with an inmate who worked in the prison warehouse. Frederick resigned her position. Rogers was question about but denied any knowledge of the relationship. However, witness statements suggested that Roger’s knew of the relationship and committed other policy infractions. These statements prompted an internal affairs investigation.
On December 3, 2008, during internal affairs interview, Rogers claims the investigator threatened that she would be terminated if she did not resign. Then, Rogers signed a pre-written resignation letter, which claimed her resignation was “made freely without coercion or promise.”
Later, Rogers filed suit, claiming, among other things, that the resignation was in fact an involuntary termination. Rogers claims she felt that, after the investigator’s threat, she had no choice but to resign. She also claimed she resigned because she “feared that [her] work history would be gone if [she] did not resign” and that she did not “want a termination on [her] employment history.” The Corrections Department moved to dismiss her claims, alleging that Rogers failed to prove that the resignation was involuntary.
The court noted that knowledge of an impending internal affairs action is not enough to render a resignation involuntary:
that the employee may perceive [her] only option to be resignation — for example, because of concerns about [her] reputation — is irrelevant. Similarly, the mere fact that the choice is between comparably unpleasant alternatives — e.g., resignation or facing disciplinary charges — does not of itself establish that a resignation was induced by duress or coercion, hence was involuntary.
However, the court also noted that Rogers alleged some facts, if believed, that suggests there is some measure of coercion which would render her decision to resign involuntary. Rogers alleged that (1) she was told, by an Internal Investigator, that she had to resign or she would be terminated, and (2) she was presented with a pre-written resignation letter to sign. Because a jury could determine that these allegations made Roger’s resignation the product of coercion or duress, the court refused to dismiss Roger’s claim without a jury trial.
