A worker who believes they were discriminated against on the job has, in most cases, 180 calendar days from the discriminatory act to file a formal charge with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission — a window that stretches to 300 days if the state or locality has its own employment discrimination law and an agency that enforces it, according to the EEOC's own filing guidance (SRC-01). Miss that clock, and the charge generally cannot move forward at all.
The EEOC is the federal agency that enforces workplace discrimination laws covering race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, and genetic information. It does not launch investigations on its own; a charge almost always starts with a person filing the process to begin, either through the agency's online Public Portal, in person at one of its 53 field offices nationwide, by mail, or by calling its national number to start the conversation. A phone call alone does not count as a filed charge — the agency requires a signed charge document before anything officially opens (SRC-01). Private-sector workers, job applicants, and most union members use this same front door; the exact wording of the deadline and the form of the document can vary slightly by claim type, but the 180/300-day clock and the signature requirement hold across the board.
What happens right after a charge is filed?
Once a charge is on file, the EEOC notifies the employer, named in agency records as the respondent, that a charge exists. Early on, the agency typically asks both the worker and the employer whether they want to try mediation — a voluntary, confidential session with a neutral mediator who does not decide who is right but helps the two sides work out their own resolution (SRC-03). Neither side has to agree to it, and if either declines, the charge moves to an investigator instead.
Mediation is built for speed relative to the alternative: sessions usually run three to four hours, and the EEOC reports that mediated cases close in under three months on average, against an investigation that can take 10 months or longer (SRC-03). There is no cost to either party, and both may bring a lawyer, but nothing about mediation is mandatory — it is offered, not imposed.
How does an EEOC investigation actually work?
If mediation is declined or fails, the charge goes to an EEOC investigator, who typically asks the employer to respond in writing — a document known as a position statement — and may request personnel records, interview witnesses, or visit the workplace directly. The agency's own materials describe this stage as capable of stretching past ten months, a duration that has become a recurring source of frustration for workers who file and then wait, largely because a single investigator often carries a full caseload of charges moving in parallel. When an investigation concludes, the agency issues a determination — either finding reasonable cause to believe discrimination occurred, in which case it will try to resolve the matter through conciliation with the employer before considering its own litigation, or closing the file without such a finding, which clears the way for the worker to pursue the matter independently.
A worker does not have to sit through the full ten months, however long that stretches. The EEOC will issue a Notice of Right to Sue — the document a person needs before taking their own case to federal court — at the point the agency closes its investigation. But a charging party can also request that notice early: once 180 days have passed since the charge was filed, the agency says it is required by law to give you the notice if you ask for it, and even before the 180-day mark, an early notice can be granted if the EEOC determines it will not finish within that window (SRC-02). Asking for the notice early comes with a trade-off — it also means giving up any further EEOC investigation into the charge.
What is the 90-day rule, and why does it matter so much?
Once a worker actually holds a Notice of Right to Sue in hand, the clock resets to something far tighter: 90 days to file a lawsuit in federal court, a deadline the agency describes in plain terms as one that, if missed, can end the case (SRC-02). That combination — an open-ended investigation stage that can run the better part of a year, followed by a hard 90-day sprint once the notice arrives — is the shape most charging parties and their attorneys have to plan around, whether they are waiting on the agency or pushing to get out from under it sooner.
None of this substitutes for legal advice on any individual's situation, and the EEOC's process runs on its own statutory rules that can shift by claim type, state, and whether the employer is a private company, a union, or a government body — federal employees, for instance, follow a separate complaint process entirely, a distinction the agency draws explicitly in its own guidance (SRC-01). What stays constant across the system is the sequence: file within the deadline, expect an early mediation offer, prepare for an investigation that can run long, and know that the moment a right-to-sue notice is issued, the 90-day countdown begins regardless of how the earlier stages went.
The agency also tracks how the whole system performs at scale. Its enforcement and litigation statistics — charge counts, resolutions, and outcomes broken out by year, state, and type of discrimination alleged — are published publicly back to the 1990s, giving anyone tracking the process a way to see how it is functioning beyond any single charge (SRC-04).
For a related inclusion perspective, read The Hiring Credit for Veterans and Job Seekers With Records Just Lapsed.
For more context, read How Workplace Accommodations Actually Work Under the ADA.