Wrongful Termination in Texas: A Guide for Employees

The honest answer first

Most firings in Texas are legal.

I would rather you hear that from me now than work it out for yourself six months from now, after your deadline has passed. Texas law does not require your employer to be fair to you. It does not require your employer to be right about why it fired you, and it does not require your employer to be honest about it either. What the law forbids is a short list of specific reasons, and your case lives or dies on whether your firing was one of them.

That gap is what this guide is for. To you, wrongful termination means you were fired and it was wrong. To a Texas court, it means one of a small number of claims, each with its own deadline and its own hoops. Everything below is my attempt to tell you which is which while you still have time to act.

What Texas law actually covers

Texas is an at-will state, and that means more than people think

Texas courts have said since 1888 that unless you have an actual agreement saying otherwise, your employer can end your job for a good reason, a bad reason, or no reason at all. The Texas Supreme Court restated it as recently as 2019.

The middle part is what surprises people. A bad reason is allowed. Your supervisor can fire you because she does not like you, or because she believed a rumor that was not true. There is no general requirement in Texas that an employer have good cause, investigate first, warn you first, follow its own discipline policy, or give you a chance to respond. If you are looking for the law that makes your employer be reasonable, it does not exist.

The four ways a firing becomes illegal

1. You refused to commit a crime. The one exception Texas judges created themselves, and it is narrow.
2. You were fired because of a protected characteristic. Race, color, disability, religion, sex, national origin, or age if you are 40 or older. Texas Labor Code 21.051 and 21.101.
3. You were fired for doing something the law protects. Complaining about discrimination, filing a workers' compensation claim, serving on a jury, taking military leave, and a handful of others.
4. You had an actual contract limiting your employer's right to fire you, and your employer broke it.

If what happened to you does not fit one of those four, Texas law provides no remedy for it, no matter how badly you were treated. That is the hardest sentence in this guide, and it saves people the most wasted time.

Does your employer even have enough employees?

Almost nobody asks this, and it decides a lot of cases. The Texas discrimination statute and its federal counterparts generally reach employers with 15 or more employees. Texas Labor Code 21.002(8)(A), 42 U.S.C. 2000e(b), 42 U.S.C. 12111(5)(A). Counties, cities, and state agencies are covered regardless of size. The federal age discrimination statute needs 20 or more, so a 16-person employer can be liable for age discrimination under Texas law and not under federal law. 29 U.S.C. 630(b).

Refusing to commit a crime and workers' compensation retaliation have no employee minimum at all. If you worked at a ten-person company, those two are often the only doors left open.

Refusing to break the law, and the whistleblower trap

This is the part of Texas law that costs good people their cases, because the everyday meaning of "whistleblower" and the legal meaning are two different things.

Refusing to commit a crime

In 1985 the Texas Supreme Court created what remains the only judge-made exception to at-will employment in this state. It covers an employee fired for the sole reason that the employee refused to perform an illegal act. Sabine Pilot Service, Inc. v. Hauck, 687 S.W.2d 733 (Tex. 1985). Four things have to be true, and you carry the burden of proving all of them:

• Your employer asked you to do something illegal.
• The law you were asked to break carries a criminal penalty.
• You refused.
• The refusal was the only reason you were fired.

That last element is stricter than almost anything else in employment law. Not the main reason. Not a substantial reason. The only reason. If your employer can show a genuine second reason, the claim fails. It has real advantages too. It goes straight to court with no agency step, the deadline is two years, and there is no minimum employer size.

Reporting a crime is not the same as refusing to commit one

Here is the distinction most Texas employees, and a lot of websites, get wrong. The Texas Supreme Court put it in one sentence:

"Sabine Pilot protects employees who are asked to commit a crime, not those who are asked not to report one."

Ed Rachal Foundation v. D'Unger, 207 S.W.3d 330, 332 (Tex. 2006).

An earlier case shows what that means. An employee of a private company reported inventory theft, inflated subscriber numbers, and a kickback offer to upper management, and was fired about six months later. The Texas Supreme Court held he had no claim, because he had not been "unacceptably forced to choose between risking criminal liability or being discharged from his livelihood." Winters v. Houston Chronicle Publishing Co., 795 S.W.2d 723, 724 (Tex. 1990).

So who is actually protected for reporting something?

• Government employees who report a violation of law to an appropriate law enforcement authority are protected by the Texas Whistleblower Act. Texas Government Code 554.002(a).
• Government employees who reported only inside their own agency usually are not. The statute requires a report to an authority the employee in good faith believes can enforce the law that was violated or prosecute a criminal violation. Texas Government Code 554.002(b). Telling your boss, your HR department, or an internal compliance line generally does not satisfy that, and it is the single most common way these cases die.
• Private-sector employees who report wrongdoing generally are not protected under Texas law at all, unless a specific statute covers the subject. Several do, and they are in the next section.
• Anyone who refused to commit a crime is protected by Sabine Pilot, whether a report was ever made or not.

Public employees, note the clock. Ninety days to sue, and you generally have to start your employer's grievance procedure inside that same 90 days. Texas Government Code 554.005 and 554.006. The Act gives you one thing back. If the adverse action lands within 90 days after your report, the law presumes it was because of the report and the employer has to rebut that. Texas Government Code 554.004(a).

Discrimination and retaliation

This is where most Texas wrongful termination cases actually live. Texas law protects exactly seven characteristics: race, color, disability, religion, sex, national origin, and age. Texas Labor Code 21.051. Age means 40 and older. Texas Labor Code 21.101. Sex includes pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions. Texas Labor Code 21.106(a). Sex also covers sexual orientation and transgender status under federal law after Bostock v. Clayton County, 590 U.S. 644 (2020), and a Texas appellate court has read the state statute the same way, though the Texas Supreme Court has not decided the question.

The Texas statute is deliberately modeled on federal law and the courts read the two together. Texas Labor Code 21.001. In practice most termination cases here are filed as both a state and a federal claim on a single charge.

Retaliation is often the stronger claim. It is a separate violation for an employer to punish you because you opposed a discriminatory practice, filed a charge, filed a complaint, or participated in an investigation. Texas Labor Code 21.055. What the statute protects is the opposing, the complaining, the charging, and the participating.

Here is what people miss. If you spoke up against something at work, you do not have to be right about the underlying discrimination, as long as you had a good-faith, reasonable belief that what you opposed was unlawful. The belief does have to be reasonable, so complaining about something no reasonable person could think was illegal discrimination will not do it. But I have seen plenty of situations where the original complaint was going nowhere and the company's reaction to it was the real case.

That is why timing matters so much. If you complained and then the treatment changed, write down the dates.

Other laws that protect specific workers

These are the claims people do not know exist. Each is its own statute with its own rules, and the deadlines are in the table below.

• You filed a workers' compensation claim. It is unlawful to fire or discriminate against an employee for filing a claim in good faith, hiring a lawyer for it, or testifying in one. Texas Labor Code 451.001. No employee minimum.
• You were called for jury duty. Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code 122.001(a). The remedy is one almost nobody knows about. Reinstatement, plus damages of not less than one year's compensation and not more than five years', plus attorney fees.
• You serve in the military. Federal law protects members of the uniformed services from being denied employment, reemployment, retention, promotion, or any benefit of employment because of that service. 38 U.S.C. 4311. Service only has to be a motivating factor, a lower bar than most claims, and then the employer must prove it would have acted anyway. And there is no filing deadline at all. 38 U.S.C. 4327(b). Texas protects the state military forces separately. Texas Government Code 437.204.
• You took family or medical leave. It is unlawful to interfere with FMLA rights or to fire someone for opposing an unlawful practice under it. 29 U.S.C. 2615.
• You complained about your pay. There is a gap worth knowing here. The Texas Payday Law contains no anti-retaliation provision at all. The protection is federal, under the Fair Labor Standards Act. 29 U.S.C. 215(a)(3).
• You are a nurse who reported something. Texas law protects a nurse who reports in good faith, requests a peer review determination, or refuses to engage in certain conduct. Texas Occupations Code 301.413. Retaliation is presumed if the action lands within 60 days of the report.
• You work in a nursing home or assisted living facility. Here the rule flips in your favor. Reporting a violation to your own supervisor or a facility administrator is protected, as are reports to a state agency or law enforcement. Texas Health and Safety Code 260A.014.
• You were fired because of your race. A separate federal statute, 42 U.S.C. 1981, covers race discrimination in contracts, including employment. It requires no agency charge at all and carries a four-year deadline. 28 U.S.C. 1658(a). Past the 180-day and 300-day charge deadlines on a race case, that statute is sometimes the whole ballgame.

A few claims have deadlines that are not written on the face of the statute at all. Workers' compensation retaliation is one. Do not read that silence as meaning you have time.

Contracts, handbooks, and verbal promises

At-will is a presumption, and a real agreement overcomes it. What counts is a written employment agreement with a stated term or a for-cause clause, a collective bargaining agreement, civil service protections that cover many public employees, or a severance agreement, which is a contract in its own right. A breach of contract claim has a four-year deadline. Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code 16.051.

What does not count is where people are most often disappointed.

Your employee handbook is almost certainly not a contract. Nearly every American handbook contains a disclaimer saying so, usually on the acknowledgment page you signed on your first day, and Texas courts enforce those disclaimers. Federal Express Corp. v. Dutschmann, 846 S.W.2d 282 (Tex. 1993). Go find your handbook and read the acknowledgment page. That takes five minutes and it answers the question.

Verbal assurances are almost never enough. For a promise to bind the employer, it has to unequivocally show a definite intent not to fire you except under clearly specified circumstances. General comments that your job is safe as long as your work is good do not do it, and neither do promises of "good cause" when nobody ever defined the term. The Texas Supreme Court's line is worth memorizing. An employee with no formal agreement "cannot construct one out of indefinite comments, encouragements, or assurances." Montgomery County Hospital District v. Brown, 965 S.W.2d 501, 502 (Tex. 1998). An offer letter stating an annual salary is not a promise of a year of employment.

What does not qualify

I would rather spend a section telling you what I cannot help with than let you spend three months finding out. These are the situations people call about most often that Texas law does not reach.

• You were treated unfairly. Unfair is not illegal. There has to be a forbidden reason behind it.
• Your boss is a bully. General workplace bullying, screaming, humiliation, and impossible standards are not unlawful in Texas unless they are happening because of a protected characteristic or because of something the law protects you for doing.
• You were fired for something you did not do. Employers are allowed to be wrong, and allowed to believe a false accusation. What they are not allowed to be is unlawfully motivated.
• Your employer skipped its own progressive discipline policy. Not a violation by itself. It can be useful evidence of an unlawful motive, but it is not a claim.
• Your employer has fewer than 15 employees and your theory is discrimination. Look instead at refusing to commit a crime and workers' compensation retaliation, which have no size floor.
• You are a private employee who reported wrongdoing internally, and no specific statute covers the subject. That is the Winters problem above.
• Your deadline has passed. The most painful one, and I get these calls every week. There is no general grace period.

One more, because it is a real Texas trap. If the substance of your complaint is discrimination, you cannot repackage it as some other kind of lawsuit to get around the deadlines or the damage caps. Texas courts require you to use the specific tool the Legislature built for the problem. Waffle House, Inc. v. Williams, 313 S.W.3d 796 (Tex. 2010).

Questions people actually ask

Can you sue for wrongful termination in Texas?

Sometimes, and usually not right away. There is no Texas cause of action called "wrongful termination." What exists is a set of specific claims, and for most of them you have to file a charge with a government agency before you can file anything in court. A few skip the agency entirely. Which category you are in decides what you do this week.

Is it still wrongful termination if I quit or was forced out?

Do not assume quitting ended your case, and do not assume it did not.

The discrimination statute does not only prohibit firing. It also makes it unlawful to discriminate against an employee "in connection with compensation or the terms, conditions, or privileges of employment." Texas Labor Code 21.051. So what your employer did while you were still there can matter whether or not you were the one who ended the job.

Whether a resignation can itself be treated as a firing is a fact-heavy question with a high bar, and not one to answer from a website. If you are thinking about quitting because the situation has become unbearable, that is the moment to talk to a lawyer, before you resign rather than after. What you do in the days before you leave often decides the question.

How do I prove why I was really fired?

Almost nobody confesses, so the law lets you prove motive with circumstances. Texas courts look at a recognized list of them. Continental Coffee Products Co. v. Cazarez, 937 S.W.2d 444, 451 (Tex. 1996). In plain English, whether:

1. The people who decided to fire you knew about your complaint, your claim, or your protected characteristic.
2. Anyone expressed a negative attitude about it.
3. The company failed to follow its own established policies.
4. You were treated differently from employees in similar situations.
5. The reason the company gave turns out to be false.

Read that list again as a to-do list. Every one of the five is something you can help prove by writing down what you remember while it is fresh and keeping the documents that show it.

That fifth factor is worth its own word, because employers almost always have a reason ready. Performance. Restructuring. Violation of a policy. Attendance. Proof that the stated reason is false will not win the case by itself, because an employer is allowed to be mistaken. But a reason that shifts over time, or that nobody applied to anyone else, is what these cases are built out of.

How long do I have to file?

It depends entirely on the claim. This is the table to keep.

Two are shorter than anyone expects. Ninety days for a government whistleblower, and 180 days for a Texas discrimination charge. Both run from the day it happened.

Do I have to go to the EEOC or the TWC first?

For a discrimination or discrimination-retaliation claim, yes. You cannot go straight to court. You file what is called a charge with either the Texas Workforce Commission Civil Rights Division or the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and skipping that step is generally fatal.

The good news is you usually only do it once. The two agencies work under a work-sharing agreement, so a charge filed with one is generally treated as filed with both, preserving your state and federal claims together. The charge document matters more than people realize, because it sets the boundaries of both the investigation and any later lawsuit, and you sign it under penalty of perjury.

Not every claim goes through an agency. Refusing to commit a crime, workers' compensation retaliation, jury service, military service, FMLA, wage retaliation, and race claims under section 1981 all go straight to court.

What is the average payout for a wrongful termination case in Texas?

There is not one, and I would rather explain why than repeat a number somebody made up.

Wrongful termination is not one claim in Texas. It is a bundle of claims under different statutes, and those statutes do not have the same rules about money. Two people fired on the same day at the same company can have very different cases, because one had ten years of service and the other ten months, because one found work in three weeks and the other is still looking a year later, because one claim is capped by statute and the other is not, or because one has documents and witnesses and the other has a sincere belief.

Most employment cases also resolve confidentially, so nobody has the data an honest average would require. The figures you find on the internet are marketing copy, not research, and a number drawn from someone else's case tells you nothing about yours.

So the useful question is not what the average is. It is what actually drives the number.

What actually determines what a case is worth?

Three things. What the law lets you recover, what your own facts do to those categories, and whether a statutory cap applies to your particular claim.

What the law lets you recover, depending on which statute your claim is brought under:

• Back pay, the wages and benefits lost between the firing and the judgment. The core of nearly every case.
• Front pay or reinstatement. The statute prefers putting you back to work. When returning is not realistic, and it usually is not, future lost earnings can take its place. Texas Labor Code 21.258(b).
• Compensatory damages for emotional pain, mental anguish, inconvenience, and loss of enjoyment of life. Texas Labor Code 21.2585(d).
• Punitive damages, only under statutes that allow them, only on proof the employer acted with malice or reckless indifference to your rights, and never against a government employer. Texas Labor Code 21.2585(b).
• Attorney fees and costs, where the statute provides for them. Texas Labor Code 21.259(a).
• Liquidated damages under statutes that provide them. The federal age discrimination statute is the example, allowing no compensatory or punitive damages at all and instead doubling the award for a willful violation.

What your own facts do to those categories. This is where cases separate from each other. How long you worked there and what you were paid. How long you have been out of work. What you have earned since, because interim earnings, unemployment benefits, and workers' compensation benefits all reduce back pay, and back pay cannot reach further than two years before the charge was filed. Texas Labor Code 21.258(c). How well documented the evidence is, meaning documents, dates, witnesses, and contemporaneous notes. How many people your employer employs. Which statute applies and whether it caps damages. Whether attorney fees are recoverable. And whether the employer is a private company or a government entity.

Where a cap applies, and where it does not. On a federal Title VII or Americans with Disabilities Act claim, federal law caps the combined total of compensatory and punitive damages on a ladder keyed to employer size, counted over 20 or more calendar weeks in the current or preceding year. 42 U.S.C. 1981a(b)(3). The ladder is $50,000 for an employer with more than 14 and fewer than 101 employees; $100,000 for more than 100 and fewer than 201; $200,000 for more than 200 and fewer than 501; and $300,000 for more than 500.

Three things about that ceiling matter more than the numbers.

1. It is a ceiling, not a prediction. Most cases never approach it, and it says nothing about what any particular case is worth.
2. Back pay sits outside the cap. 42 U.S.C. 1981a(b)(2). So the cap does not describe total recovery either.
3. It does not apply to every claim on this page. Race claims under 42 U.S.C. 1981 are expressly excluded. 42 U.S.C. 1981a(b)(4). A claim for being fired after refusing to commit a crime is a common-law claim rather than a discrimination claim, so the discrimination cap does not reach it. The Texas discrimination statute has its own separate cap, which also steps up with the size of the employer.

What any particular case is worth depends entirely on its own facts and its own legal circumstances. Nothing on this page is a prediction about yours.

What does a wrongful termination lawyer cost?

Lawyers who represent employees in Texas generally work one of two ways. Many termination cases are handled on a contingency fee, which means the fee is a percentage of what is recovered rather than an hourly bill. Other work is different. Reviewing a severance agreement or advising you on a contract is usually hourly or a flat fee, because there is nothing to take a percentage of.

Understand that the fee and the expenses of a case are two separate things. Litigation costs money regardless of the fee arrangement, for filing fees, depositions, court reporters, records, and experts. Ask any lawyer you consult who advances those costs, whether you are responsible for repaying them, and what happens to those expenses if the case does not succeed. Get the answer in writing, in the representation agreement, before you sign it.

There is also a feature of these statutes worth knowing. The Texas discrimination statute allows a court to award the prevailing party a reasonable attorney's fee as part of the costs. Texas Labor Code 21.259(a). Congress wrote the same idea into the federal statutes. That fee-shifting is a large part of why an ordinary worker can bring a case against an employer with far deeper pockets.

And ask the other question. Will this lawyer actually file suit and litigate the case, or only send a demand letter.

Is it worth suing my employer?

Only you can answer that, but you should answer it with accurate information.

Employment cases against companies are hard to win in Texas. In my opinion, the state and federal courts here have made these cases harder than the law was ever meant to be. Strong cases get thrown out before a jury ever hears them. I have watched it happen for 30 years.

A case can take years. It will involve giving a deposition under oath, having your work history examined in detail, and having your employer tell its version of events. Meanwhile you are expected to be looking for other work, and what you earn reduces what you can recover.

None of that means do not do it. People bring these cases for reasons that are not only financial, and I have never thought that was irrational. It does mean you should walk in with your eyes open, and that anyone who tells you it will be quick and easy is selling something.

What should I do right now?

Work through the list below, starting today. If you take one thing from this page, take the date. Write down the day you were told you were being fired, because every deadline here runs from it.

What to do in the first 30 days

Who I take, and who I do not

I represent employees. Only employees, never employers. I have been practicing law for 30 years, and since I founded this firm in 2001 I have done nothing but this work. I am Board Certified in Labor and Employment Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization.

I also keep a deliberately small caseload, which means I turn down cases I would like to take. That is not a comment on those cases. It is arithmetic. A case worked properly takes a great deal of one lawyer's attention, and a lawyer carrying two hundred files cannot give it.

The cases I can usually help with have things in common. There is a reason behind the firing that the law actually forbids. There is something beyond your own belief about the motive, meaning documents, timing, witnesses, or a pattern. The deadline has not run. And the harm is real enough to justify what a lawsuit costs everyone involved, including you.

The situations I usually cannot help with are the ones in the "what does not qualify" section above. Unfair but legal firings. Employers too small to be covered. Private-sector internal reports with no statute behind them. And, most often and most painfully, deadlines that have already passed.

If I tell you no, it does not mean you have no possible case, and it does not mean that what happened to you was right or fair. It simply means that I may not be the best lawyer to take on your fight at this time due to my docket constraints or a myriad of other factors. Always seek a second opinion.