Most lawyers in Pennsylvania, regardless of whether they regularly practice employment law, are undoubtedly aware that under Pennsylvania law, “as a general rule, employees are at-will, absent a contract, and may be terminated at any time, for any reason or for no reason,” as in Stumpp v. Stroudsburg Municipal Authority, 540 Pa. 391, 396 (1995). The practitioner should also be aware that among the few exceptions to the “at-will” employment doctrine are the statutory protections for employees afforded by Pennsylvania’s Whistleblower Law, 43 P.S. Section 1421.
Under the Whistleblower Law as originally enacted, the claimant was required to be an employee of a “public body” for the law to apply. Public body was defined as follows:
