Statute of Limitations

Statute of limitations is another important consideration for charges filed under Title VII. Statute of Limitation is the time frame from the date of the alleged illegal discrimination in which a person or party has to file a claim:

1. Federal employees only have 30 days from the date of the alleged discrimination to file or the claim will be barred.
2. Non-federal employees have 180 days from the date of the alleged discrimination to file a claim, if there is no state agency (also known as a 706 agency) that enforces employment-discrimination claims.
3. If there is an available state (706 agency) enforcement agency, the statute of limitations is generally extended to 300 days from the date of the alleged discrimination.

If there are several acts of alleged illegal discrimination involved and each took place on different dates, for statute of limitation purposes, the date of the last act is the date to use. This is based on the concept of continuing violations.

Example: John Doe is removed from one job to a lower-paying job on April 15, 2006, and is suspended without pay on May 1, 2006, and is fired on May 15, 2006. He may be able to file a charge within the statute of limitations covering all alleged acts of discrimination up to 300 days after May 15, 2006.

However, there are instances where the acts are not viewed as “continuing” because they are unrelated.

Example: A Hispanic male is denied promotion on May 1, 2006, in favor of a white male employee. On May 31, 2006, he is again denied promotion, this time in favor of a Hispanic female employee. He claims that both denials of promotion violated Title VII. His discrimination claim of April 1 can only be based on race, and his discrimination claim for May 31 can only be gender discrimination: the two decisions are clearly unrelated to each other. So the employee must file for the first denial of promotion based upon race within 300 days following May 1.

If a court case is filed by the victim after the EEOC or state agency dismisses the charges, the court will review the case de novo: it will consider all the evidence presented by the parties and come to a completely independent decision. This means it will not consider the EEOC or state-agency decision. However, the court will refuse to rule on the case if the victim did not first file his/her claim with EEOC, thus exhausting administrative remedies. This is because Congress intended that under Title VII and state anti-discrimination statutes, agencies should be given a chance to investigate and resolve the issues before filing directly with the court for resolution.

Due to a large number of EEOC charges, the agency encourages resolution of complaints through mediation. Mediation is an alternative to the traditional investigative or litigation process used by the EEOCD. It is an informal process in which a neutral third party assists the opposing parties to reach a voluntary negotiated resolution of a charge of discrimination.