Manager Asked Me To Change Employees Performance Review “so It Will Be Easier” When They Lay Him Off

It has been a long week to say the least. I never thought I would ever have to make a post on this subreddit, yet here I am.

While it's been building for a while, the real issues to talk about came up this week. At the beginning of the week I was informed by my manager that we would be laying off one of my employees. I wasn't exactly thrilled about it, but also nothing I could really do. I said OK and started trying to figure out how I could try and divvy out the workload to the remaining employees without putting too much on them and burning them out.

Then towards the end of the week my boss called me up and asked me to modify the performance review of the one employee that they were looking to layoff. They gave me one specific change where they wanted me to lower the rating where I gave the employee an 'exceeds expectations' and move it to a 'meets expectation'. They then said they wanted me to "choose any one of the areas where I rated the employee the employee a 'meets expectation' and lower the rating to 'needs improvement'. I asked why and their response was so that when we lay off the employee it will be easier. I then repeated what they said back to them and I think they realized they might have said something they shouldn't have. I told my manager that I didn't agree with doing this and would not make the change. I reported the issue to our HR department which did an "investigation" and said it was just a mistake by my manager. I promptly turned in my two week notice as this went against my morals, and if they did it to this employee I would probably be next after reporting this to HR. Work has decided that they will pay out my two weeks but has asked me not to return to the office.

The state that this occurred in is an At-Will state. They could lay this employee off for almost any reason, but was asking me to modify the performance review to make it easier to be able to lay off the employee illegal?

For added context: - the employee they are looking to lay off is part of multiple protected classes, though I don't think the reason they were wanting to lay them off was in part because of any of those classes.

• while this was the only one of my employees they requested me to change the performance review for, I later heard that the executive team was having several managers to modify and lower the performance reviews for several employees.