Federal Statute of Limitations for Ongoing Race Discrimination in Employment

Feeling discriminated against at work?

A statute of limitations is a law that requires you to file your legal claims within a certain amount of time. If you file a claim outside the statute of limitations, the judge will dismiss your claim. The idea is that if the claim is important enough, you should raise it sooner rather than later, and courts should not have to resolve stale legal issues. In a nutshell, the statute of limitations provides a small window of time for you to assert your legal rights, and if you miss that window, you miss the opportunity to raise your legal rights. Generally, the federal statute of limitations for race discrimination in employment is 300 days.

Anti-Discrimination Law

The federal law that protects against race discrimination is called the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects against many forms of discrimination, including harassment, hostile work environment, termination, demotion, and failure to hire because of race.

Calculation

When your employer fires you because of your race, it is easy to determine the exact date the discrimination occurred, because it is the date you got fired. However, if your employer racially harasses you or maintains a racially hostile work environment, then it may be more difficult to point to an exact day. You may feel harassed one month, then your boss takes a break for the next two months, but then picks up the racial comments again for another two months straight. How do you pick the single day of harassment for purposes of calculating the statute of limitations?

Considerations

Generally, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 provides that you must file a racial discrimination claim within 300 days of the date of discrimination. So, if you are fired on Day 1, you have to file a discrimination claim before Day 301. For ongoing racial discrimination, such as harassment or hostile work environment, you have to perform a critical analysis of the facts and circumstances. As a general rule, the 300-day time begins to tick on the last date of any act that constitutes part of the ongoing harassment.

Example

If you start to feel harassed on Day 1 because your boss makes a racial slur that day, then makes other comments every few days for the next month-and-a-half, and then the last time your boss says anything harassing is on Day 42, you have until Day 342 to file your claim. So long as the harassment on Day 42 was related in some way to the harassment on Day 1, your claim will cover the harassment on Day 1 even though 300 days has technically passed. However, if your boss makes a comment on Day 1, then doesn't make any other comments until Day 301, the statute of limitations for the comment on Day 1 will have run and you will not be able to bring a claim based on the Day 1 comment.

Expert Insight

For two reasons, you always need to be aware of your state's laws on racial discrimination. First, your state might have its own anti-discrimination law similar to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and if it does, that law will have its own statute of limitations. In many states the statute of limitations is 180 days, not 300. Additionally, some states provide that even the statute of limitations for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is shortened to 180 days for conduct that occurs in that state. So, you may have only 180 days instead of the typical 300 days to file your claim.

References

• Federal Laws Prohibiting Discrimination