CNMI Ban on Employment Discrimination Against Veterans

This is the strongest veterans employment provision in the Commonwealth Code and it is one sentence long. 1 CMC § 20124: "No person shall discriminate against any other person in employment, including but not limited to hiring, promotion, dismissal, and the granting of appropriate salary and benefit because of prior military service in the United States Armed Forces or Reserves." Then the remedies, which is where it gets its teeth. A violation is punishable by a fine of not more than $2,000, and is "actionable as a civil tort within the jurisdiction of the Northern Mariana Islands." A court that finds such discrimination "may grant punitive damages if it deems fit." Three things follow that a veteran should know. It creates a private right of action. The veteran does not have to persuade a prosecutor or an agency to act; the statute puts the claim in the veteran's own hands as a tort, with punitive damages expressly available. That is a stronger local remedy than most jurisdictions in this catalog provide. It reaches every person, not just the government. The section says no person shall discriminate, and it lists hiring, promotion, dismissal and salary and benefit decisions without limiting them. Private employers are within it. It sits alongside, not instead of, USERRA. The federal Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act applies in the Commonwealth: 38 U.S.C. § 4303(14) defines State to include "other territories of the United States (including the agencies and political subdivisions thereof)." USERRA covers reemployment after service, the escalator principle, and discrimination on the basis of service, and a veteran with a live problem should look at both. Where they overlap, the more protective route is the one to use, and nothing in a territorial statute can cut a federal right down. Note the direction of travel in the Commonwealth Code. Section 20124, from Public Law 13-34 of 2002, forbids discriminating against a veteran. Section 20134, from Public Law 22-30 of 2023, permits a private employer to prefer a veteran and shields that choice from equal employment claims. Those are consistent: the Commonwealth prohibits holding service against someone and permits counting it in their favour. The fine is small. The tort is not necessarily. If you are weighing whether to raise something, the civil claim is the part of this section worth talking to a lawyer about.