Under the COBRA rules, employers with 20 or more employees must offer their employees continuing participation in their group healthcare plan. However, the law provides an exception for when an employee is fired for gross misconduct.
In a recent case in Kansas, an employee was fired for “mooning” another employee (that is, exposing her rear end, for those of you who don’t remember the school dance scene from Grease). Being that she was not a stripper working at a gentlemen’s club, but rather a nurse working for a healthcare provider, her employer deemed that exposing her rear end to another employee in a patient care area was a violation of workplace policy and she was fired.
But when her employer tried to deny her COBRA coverage under the gross misconduct exception, she pursued a claim … and won. The case made it all the way to the District Court of Kansas, which upheld the Department of Labor’s decision that her actions did not constitute gross misconduct.
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