Yes. And that is hard for a fired employee to hear. Employment lawyers regularly receive calls from an outraged employee who was terminated for reasons that were not true. While certainly a reason for righteous indignation, unless the termination is motivated by unlawful discrimination or retaliation, it is legal to fire an employee for false reasons.

Parrott v. PNC Bank, 986 F. Supp. 2d 1263, 1275 (N.D. Ala. 2013) held “The court does not: ‘analyze "whether employment decisions are prudent or fair. Instead [its] sole concern is whether unlawful discriminatory animus motivates a challenged employment decision." Damon v. Fleming Supermarkets of Fla., Inc., 196 F.3d 1354, 1361 (11th Cir.1999). Whether an employee actually engaged in the misconduct that was reported to the decision-maker is irrelevant to the issue of whether the decision maker believed that the employee had done wrong. See Elrod v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 939 F.2d 1466, 1470 (11th Cir.1991).'”

The Parrot case is still cited with its guidance based on 11th Circuit law. See, Kennedy v. Austin, No. 4:21-cv-333, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 20910 (S.D. Ga. Jan. 31, 2024). Thus, while the terminated employee is focused on the false reasons, the employment lawyer will focus on the evidence of pretextual reasons. There must be a lawful basis to pursue a claim for discrimination or retaliation. It often fails, unless good evidence arises.

In this Kennedy case, the plaintiff, who was white, felt animosity and discrimination from her immediate supervisor who was black. The plaintiff complained about this, but the alleged harassment continued. She was accused of using a racial slur against the supervisor and of taking an intimidating posture. But the plaintiff had recorded the conversation with her immediate supervisor and let a manager listen to that recording, which proved that she did not use the slur. There was further evaluation since the act of secretly making the recording violated a business policy. In the end, the plaintiff was moved to an evening shift from the dayshift, and then, eventually, it was proposed that she be suspended for 7 days. The plaintiff sued for racial discrimination. The district court granted a motion for summary judgment dismissing the case because there was no evidence that the proposed suspension based on the policy of “no secret recordings” was pretextual.

In Johnson v. Miami-Dade Cty., 948 F.3d 1318, 1322 (11th Cir. 2020), "Harrius Johnson, a black male, was terminated from the Miami-Dade County Police Department ("MDPD") for insubordination and disrespecting his superior officers.…". Mr. Johnson asserted that the alleged disrespect was not true. He claimed race discrimination played a role in his termination. It was noted that "a plaintiff can attempt to establish that his employer's proffered reason for its employment decision was a pretext for unlawful activity by showing that the employer treated similarly situated employees differently—i.e., by showing that valid "comparators" were treated differently than the plaintiff.…" Id. at 1325-26. In this case, the district court dismissed all claims, however it had evaluated the comparators with a traditional "nearly identical test" which the 11th Circuit said was too strict. The plaintiff only had to show the comparators were similarly situated in all material respects. Thus, the case was reversed and remanded on that ground but affirmed on all other grounds.

In the end, it remains that you can be terminated for false reasons. We all can sympathize with being accused wrongfully, however, that alone does not make a case of wrongful termination. There must be proof that the reasons are a pretext for unlawful discriminatory or retaliatory conduct.