The U.S. Supreme Court will soon decide whether an employee who brings a discrimination claim must always exhaust the administrative remedies available through the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) before filing a lawsuit or if the employee can go straight to court if the employer doesn’t object.
The plaintiff in this case sued her employer for religious discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Federal law generally requires employees to go through the EEOC’s administrative complaint process before filing a lawsuit, but the plaintiff took her claim straight to court. After five years of court proceedings, her employer, Fort Bend County, Texas, noted that her lawsuit should be dismissed because she failed to first file a charge with the EEOC.
