Understanding the Employment Discrimination Process

Even though I practice employment law, I am still surprised at how many employees contemplate employment discrimination lawsuits. To subject oneself to such a long, painful, and expensive journey seems counterintuitive. However, emotions run high when an employee is fired. The first step in any such journey, for both employees and employers, should be to understand how the employment discrimination process works. This article outlines that process under federal law. See also www.eeoc.com. (For brevity's sake, I omit the wrinkles created by state and local employment law.)

The single most important thing to understand is that an aggrieved employee cannot go straight to court. Because of the massive number of employment disputes, Congress requires that all such charges be filed first with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission—the EEOC. Generally, an employee must file a Charge of Discrimination within 300 days of the alleged wrongdoing. These charges are short-about two