§ 122.003.Defense

The employer’s answer, and its second subsection is more demanding than the first suggests.

It is a defense that the employer’s circumstances changed while the employee served as a juror or grand juror so that reemployment was impossible or unreasonable.

The defence covers the genuine case. A business that closed a location, lost a contract, or laid off a department during the employee’s absence has not retaliated, and the chapter does not require it to recreate a job that no longer exists.

Two limits are built into the wording. The change must have occurred while the employee served, so a decision taken before the summons or after the return does not qualify. And the standard is impossible or unreasonable rather than inconvenient or costly.

Subsection (b) is where the defence is won or lost: to establish it, an employer must prove that the termination of employment was because of circumstances other than the employee’s service.

The burden is on the employer, and it is a burden of proof rather than of production. Raising a plausible business explanation is not enough; the employer must prove causation lay elsewhere.

That allocation reflects who holds the evidence. The reasons for a dismissal sit in the employer’s records and in its managers’ knowledge, and an employee has no access to either.

Read together, the two subsections require a coherent story. An employer must show both that the circumstances changed and that the change, rather than the jury service, is why the employment ended.

A partial change will not do. Where the position survived in some form, "impossible or unreasonable" is a hard standard to meet.