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Filing a Discrimination Charge (EEOC)

The administrative step that must come before almost any federal employment-discrimination lawsuit - a charge filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or a state agency within a short statutory window, followed by a right-to-sue letter that starts the next clock.

Informational only - this is not legal advice. These definitions explain general legal vocabulary in plain English. They are not advice about your situation, reading them creates no attorney-client relationship, and the law differs from state to state and changes over time. For advice you can rely on, speak to a lawyer licensed in your state.

What it means

Federal law prohibits an employer above a size threshold from discriminating in hiring, pay, promotion, discipline or discharge because of race, colour, religion, sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation and gender identity), national origin, age, disability or genetic information. But a person who believes it has happened cannot go straight to court. The statutes require a charge to be filed first with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or with a state or local fair-employment agency that shares jurisdiction, within a period set by statute that runs from the discriminatory act - and that period is short, shorter than almost any other civil deadline, and is not extended because the person was negotiating, on leave, or using an internal complaint process.

Filing starts an administrative process rather than a lawsuit. The agency notifies the employer, may investigate, may attempt mediation, and eventually either finds reasonable cause, dismisses the charge, or simply runs out of time. At the end it issues a notice of right to sue, and the person then has a second short period, again set by statute, to file in court. A charge can be filed by mail, in person or through the agency's online portal without a lawyer, and retaliation for filing one is separately unlawful. Equal-pay claims and some age claims have different routes, and federal employees are on a wholly different and faster track that begins with the agency's own EEO counsellor.

The charge defines the case: a lawsuit may only raise claims that were in the charge or that a reasonable investigation of it would have reached, so a charge that names sex discrimination but not retaliation, or one supervisor but not the practice behind them, narrows what can later be sued on. State law often reaches smaller employers, more protected classes and longer deadlines than the federal statutes, and a charge filed with the state agency is usually cross-filed with the EEOC automatically.

Where this comes from

The charge-filing requirement and its deadlines are in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(e)(1) and (f)(1); the same procedure is incorporated by the Americans with Disabilities Act (42 U.S.C. § 12117) and, with variations, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (29 U.S.C. § 626(d)) and the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act. The Supreme Court held in Fort Bend County v. Davis, 587 U.S. 541 (2019), that the requirement is mandatory but not jurisdictional, so an employer must raise a missed charge promptly or forfeit the objection. Federal-employee procedures are at 29 C.F.R. part 1614. Employer-size thresholds and every deadline are set in the statutes and are not stated here.

When people hire a lawyer for this

The deadline is the reason to see a lawyer within days of the event rather than after the internal grievance fails, and a lawyer will draft the charge so that it covers every theory and every actor the later lawsuit will need. A person who has already filed alone should bring the charge and the right-to-sue notice to the first meeting, because the second clock is already running from the date on that notice, and it is the one most often missed.

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Part of the LawyerLand plain-English legal glossary. Definitions are written from primary sources - statutes and court rules - and each entry states the authority it rests on, or says plainly when the doctrine is state law with no national rule.

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