Yes. By refusing to recommend Daphne for a promotion because of her complaint, the supervisor violated the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act of 1994, otherwise known as USERRA. USERRA not only protects employees from discrimination based on their military status, employees are also protected from any adverse employment action taken when they’ve asserted their USERRA rights.

Any employee is protected from retaliation regardless of whether the employee has performed military service. Moreover, the law’s ban on retaliation applies to any position of employment, including a position that is for a brief, nonrecurrent period.

The ban on retaliatory actions is broad and extends to hiring, promotion, reemployment, termination, and any “benefit of employment.” Any “benefit of employment” means any advantage, profit, privilege, gain, status, or interest flowing from an employment relationship, including fringe benefits and opportunities to select work hours or location of employment.

In an employee’s action to enforce USERRA, testimony, statement, assistance, participation, or exercise of a right under the law is a motivating factor in an employer’s adverse employment action against that person, the employer has violated the law. However, the employer can avoid liability if it can prove that it would have taken the same action in the absence of such protected activity by the person.

Note that an employer is legally responsible if the employee’s protected activity is just one of the two or more reasons for its challenged action, unless the employer can prove that any reason other than the service connection would have been sufficient to justify its action.