After repeatedly complaining to supervisors, Richardson was laid off last year with the explanation that the company didn't have enough work for her. She thought Granite had different motives, and in May, she filed a lawsuit against the company in federal court for gender discrimination and illegal retaliation. She had worked for the company for 12 years.

A U.S. Supreme Court ruling a few weeks ago may make her retaliation charge easier to win. Employees now have broader protection to complain about discrimination in the workplace, and employers are bracing for a rise in retaliation lawsuits.

Richardson hopes more employees who experience discrimination will speak out.

"I don't want someone else to go through what I did. . . . I went through hell," said Richardson, who is now working for less than half the wage she was paid at Granite. "Even if I could do the job that another guy under me wasn't smart enough to do, they wouldn't let me do it."

Jacque Underdown, a spokeswoman for Watsonville, Calif.-based Granite Construction, said the company has not yet been served with Richardson's suit and does not comment on pending litigation.

She noted that Granite has been named one of the Top 100 companies to work for by Fortune magazine the past three years.

"Being on that list says a lot," Underdown said. "We really do value all of our employees."

On June 22, the Supreme Court upheld rulings made by lower courts and added a broader definition of retaliation, an illegal act included in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Under that law, employers are prohibited from punishing employees or job applicants for complaining that they have been discriminated against because of their race, color, religion, sex or national origin.

The case involved Sheila White, a one-time rail yard worker in Memphis, Tenn., for Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Railway Co. Like Richardson, White was the only woman working in her department. She was frequently told she didn't belong there and was subjected to inappropriate remarks by male co-workers, according to court documents.

She complained about the gender discrimination to a manager and later filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Although one co-worker was initially disciplined, White herself was reassigned to less desirable duties within her job title and later put on 37 days of unpaid leave after she complained again. Her discrimination claims were never supported by lower courts, but the retaliation complaint was.

In the past, retaliation has been difficult to prove if the action fell short of dismissal, but the Supreme Court ruled that retaliation does not even need to be related to employment or occur at the workplace. Any action that would dissuade a reasonable worker from making a discrimination complaint can qualify as retaliation. The decision includes examples of changing the shift times of a young mother and excluding an employee from weekly training luncheons.

"Welcome to the new world. . . . We're more vulnerable now to claims of retaliation than we were" before, Mark Gavre, an employment attorney at Parsons Behle & Latimer's Salt Lake City office, said Friday to nearly 30 human resources professionals gathered at a briefing on the ruling. "If you know someone has complained [about discrimination], you always want to be more careful about actions you take regarding that employee."

Retaliation claims now comprise 25 percent of all complaints filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which received close to 20,000 retaliation cases last year. Gavre said those numbers are bound to increase in the coming years as workers learn about the broader protection available to them. But he also hoped the ruling will have a preventive effect: Companies will be more cautious when handling employees who feel they have experienced discrimination.

Gavre's advice for employers? An anti-discrimination policy is an obvious necessity, but make sure managers and supervisors are frequently trained in that policy. A proper procedure for investigating discrimination complaints and handling offended employees needs to be in place.

"Most retaliation comes from a supervisor. You want to train your supervisors so they understand what retaliation is and avoid doing something that even appears retaliatory," Gavre said after the briefing.

Gavre also advises supervisors to refer problems to human resources managers early on. And human resources managers need to be aware of what powers supervisors have. They might not be able to fire people, but they can probably reassign duties and change schedules.

If disciplinary action is warranted toward an employee who has complained of discrimination in the past, make sure the reasons can be supported and are documented. All employees need to be treated consistently. Even if an employee has complained of sexual harassment in the past, he or she can still be disciplined for being tardy six times, Gavre said.

"It's clearly a very pro-employee as opposed to a pro-employer decision," Gavre said. "There's no question that it will have a big impact."

rwinters@sltrib.com