Ineligibility for unemployment benefits for insubordination
Courts have recognized that conduct that may justify termination of an employee may not necessarily warrant denial of unemployment benefits
The U.S. Department of Labor reported that 219,000 Americans filed for unemployment insurance benefits in the week ending April 4, a substantial increase from the week before. The vast majority of those who applied for benefits will receive them, including those who lost their jobs due to mass layoffs. Some won’t.
Section 100 of the California Unemployment Insurance Code says the purpose of the unemployment insurance system is to provide “benefits for persons unemployed through no fault of their own.” Among other things, that means those terminated for insubordination are ineligible for benefits. But insubordination is not mere disobedience.
Disqualifying misconduct
In 1984, the California Supreme Court ruled that disqualifying misconduct is limited to an employee’s “willful and wanton misbehavior,” meaning deliberate violations of the employer’s standards of behavior, or gross or recurrent negligence reflecting “equal culpability, wrongful intent or evil design, or … an intentional and substantial disregard of the employer’s interests or of the employee’s duties and obligations to his employer.”
By contrast, an employee’s “mere inefficiency, unsatisfactory conduct, failure in good performance as the result of inability or incapacity, inadvertencies or ordinary negligence in isolated instances, or good faith errors in judgment or discretion” is not disqualifying.
It is the employer’s burden to rebut the presumption that the termination was for reasons other than misconduct. Courts have recognized that conduct that may justify termination of an employee may not necessarily warrant denial of unemployment benefits.
Regulatory framework
Section 1256-36 of the California Code of Regulations provides a framework for when insubordination in particular will disqualify an applicant from benefits.
The regulation identifies four categories of insubordination that disqualify an applicant from benefits: (1) unjustified refusal to comply with an employer’s lawful and reasonableorders; (2) exceeding the employee’s express or implied authority; (3) making a remark damaging to the employer; and (4) using vulgar, profane, or offensive language toward an employer that is not part of “the normal exchange and customary good-natured banter” between employer and employee.
Good-faith errors in judgment will not disqualify an applicant from receiving benefits. Also, “[g]enerally, insubordination requires cumulative acts with prior reprimands or warnings. However, a single act without prior reprimands or warnings can be insubordinate if the act is substantially detrimental to the employer’s interests.”
Click here to read the full article written by SCMV Shareholder Dan Eaton and published in The San Diego Union-Tribune.