Yes, an employee can be fired for threatening someone at work, and in most workplaces they will be. Every state except Montana follows at-will employment, which lets an employer end the relationship for any lawful reason, and a credible threat of harm is a lawful reason almost everywhere it comes up.1USAGov. Termination Guidance for Employers Termination is usually just the first consequence. Criminal charges, denial of unemployment benefits, and a restraining order barring you from the property can all follow from the same incident.
Why At-Will Employment Makes This Easy for Employers
Under at-will employment, either side can end the job at any time for any reason that isn’t illegal. Illegal reasons are narrow: discrimination based on race, sex, age, disability, national origin, or genetic information, and retaliation for reporting unsafe or unlawful practices.1USAGov. Termination Guidance for Employers Threatening a coworker isn’t a protected category.
An employer doesn’t have to prove a threat the way a prosecutor would at trial. There’s no reasonable-doubt standard inside a private workplace. If the employer reasonably believes a threat was made after looking into it, that’s enough to support the firing.
The exceptions are narrow. A written employment contract with specific termination procedures, or a collective bargaining agreement requiring progressive discipline, can change the process. Even then, most of those contracts carve out serious misconduct, and a credible threat of violence usually qualifies for immediate termination under the agreement’s own terms.
Employers also have reasons to act beyond simply being allowed to. The Occupational Safety and Health Act’s General Duty Clause requires every employer to keep the workplace free from recognized hazards likely to cause serious harm,2Occupational Safety and Health Administration. OSH Act of 1970 – Section 5 Duties and OSHA’s definition of workplace violence expressly includes threats, intimidation, and other threatening behavior.3Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Workplace Violence – Overview Ignoring a reported threat also exposes the company to a negligent retention lawsuit if the employee later harms someone. The liability math almost always pushes toward termination.
What Counts as a Threat
A threat doesn’t have to be a dramatic declaration. It’s any statement, gesture, or behavior that a reasonable person would read as signaling intent to cause harm. The standard is objective. Whether you “really meant it” is not the test; what matters is how a reasonable coworker or supervisor would have understood it.
- Verbal threats, including direct statements like “I’ll hurt you if you do that again,” conditional warnings tied to consequences, and vague but menacing remarks like “You’ll regret this” paired with aggressive body language.
- Physical intimidation, such as cornering someone, invading personal space aggressively, slamming objects, or raising a fist.
- Written and electronic threats sent by email, text, company chat, or social media, whether directed at a specific coworker or at the workplace generally.
Threats Made Off the Clock or on Social Media
A threat made outside work hours can still get you fired. A threatening social media post about a coworker gives the employer a legitimate reason to act, because the coworker still has to walk into the office the next morning. Employers routinely terminate for off-duty conduct that creates a dangerous or hostile situation at work, and courts have generally upheld those decisions when the conduct has a clear connection to the workplace.
The National Labor Relations Board does protect some social media activity when employees are discussing wages, working conditions, or organizing, even if the language gets heated.4National Labor Relations Board. Social Media That protection ends where genuine threats of violence or egregiously offensive statements begin. Complaining online that a manager is unfair is protected. Posting that you want to hurt the manager is not.
A Mental Health Condition Does Not Excuse a Threat
One area where employees and their attorneys often push back is disability. The argument is that if threatening behavior is connected to a mental health condition, the Americans with Disabilities Act requires accommodation rather than termination. The EEOC has rejected that.
EEOC guidance states that an employer never has to tolerate violence, threats of violence, theft, or destruction of property, even when the conduct results from a disability. A disabled employee can be disciplined for those behaviors the same way any other employee would be.5U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Applying Performance and Conduct Standards to Employees with Disabilities Prohibitions on violence and threats are treated as job-related and consistent with business necessity in every position in every workplace.
If a disability connection is raised, the employer should still run the EEOC’s four-factor “direct threat” analysis: the duration of the risk, the severity of the potential harm, the likelihood it will occur, and how imminent it is.6U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Enforcement Guidance on Disability-Related Inquiries and Medical Examinations of Employees The assessment has to be individualized and based on current medical evidence, not stereotypes about a diagnosis. The employer is also expected to consider whether a reasonable accommodation, like adjusted scheduling or a leave of absence, could help the employee meet conduct standards going forward.7U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Enforcement Guidance on Reasonable Accommodation and Undue Hardship Under the ADA None of this means past threats have to be excused. It means the decision should be documented as one about conduct, not diagnosis.
When Firing for a “Threat” Could Actually Be Unlawful
Two narrow situations can flip a threat-based termination into an illegal one.
Protected Concerted Activity Under the NLRA
The National Labor Relations Act protects employees’ right to act together to improve working conditions, whether or not they are in a union. Section 7 guarantees the right to engage in concerted activities for mutual aid or protection.8National Labor Relations Board. Interfering with Employee Rights – Section 7 and 8(a)(1) Language during those activities sometimes gets heated. An employee shouting during a group protest that the company’s safety failures are going to get someone killed is making a point about hazards, not threatening a person.
The NLRB has recognized that some strong language during protected activity is part of the rough-and-tumble of labor disputes. The protection has limits. An employee loses it by saying something egregiously offensive, making knowingly false statements, or disparaging the employer’s products in ways unrelated to a labor dispute.9National Labor Relations Board. Concerted Activity A direct, personal threat aimed at a specific person, like “I’m going to hurt you,” falls outside the NLRA’s umbrella regardless of context. The line runs between collective advocacy that uses forceful language and individual intimidation targeting a person.
Pretext for Retaliation
The other risk is when a threat allegation is manufactured or inflated to cover the real reason. If an employee recently filed a discrimination complaint, requested FMLA leave, or reported safety violations, and then is fired over a vaguely worded “threatening” comment, the timing draws scrutiny. Courts look at whether the employer applied its threat policies consistently, whether similar language by other employees went unpunished, whether the investigation was thorough or the conclusion looked predetermined, and how short the gap was between the protected activity and the firing. Using a threat allegation as cover for retaliation violates anti-discrimination and whistleblower laws.
Criminal Charges Can Follow the Firing
Losing the job may be the smallest problem. Workplace threats can produce criminal charges at both the federal and state level. Federal law makes it a crime, punishable by up to five years in prison, to transmit a threat to injure another person through interstate communications, which covers phone calls, emails, texts, and social media.10Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 U.S. Code 875 – Interstate Communications
Most states also have criminal threatening or terroristic threat statutes that reach in-person threats. They typically apply when someone threatens violence and the target reasonably believes the threat is genuine. Charges can range from misdemeanors carrying fines and probation to felonies with years of prison time, depending on the state and the severity. Employers who take a threat seriously often involve law enforcement, so termination and arrest can arrive the same day.
Employers in most states can also seek workplace violence restraining orders or protective orders to keep a fired employee off the premises and away from coworkers. Violating one is a separate criminal offense.
Unemployment Benefits After a Threat-Based Firing
An employee fired for making threats will usually have a hard time collecting unemployment. Every state’s unemployment system disqualifies employees terminated for misconduct, and threatening a coworker or supervisor sits squarely inside that category.
Many states also draw a line between ordinary misconduct and gross misconduct. Ordinary misconduct may reduce or delay benefits for a set number of weeks. Gross misconduct, which typically covers violence and threats, can disqualify a claimant from benefits entirely. At the hearing, the employer’s incident documentation, witness statements, and investigation file become the central evidence. Where that record is thorough and contemporaneous, misconduct appeals rarely succeed.