You can sue a company for not hiring you, but only when the refusal broke a specific law: federal anti-discrimination statutes, the Fair Credit Reporting Act, rules against retaliation, or state-law claims for fraud and misrepresentation. A general sense that the decision was unfair is not enough. And for most of these claims, you have to file a charge with a federal agency before you ever see the inside of a courtroom, sometimes within as little as 180 days.
Legal Grounds That Support a Lawsuit
The strongest hiring claims are anchored in federal statutes. Each one covers a different kind of employer misconduct, and each has its own coverage threshold.
Discrimination Based on a Protected Characteristic
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 makes it illegal for employers with 15 or more employees to base hiring decisions on race, color, national origin, religion, or sex.1U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 The 15-employee floor matters. If the company is smaller, Title VII does not reach it, though a state law may.
The Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County confirmed that Title VII’s ban on sex discrimination also covers sexual orientation and gender identity, and it applies at every stage of employment, including hiring.2Supreme Court of the United States. Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia Religious discrimination goes further than a refusal to hire someone for their faith: employers must reasonably accommodate sincerely held religious beliefs unless doing so would create an undue hardship, and the employer carries the burden of proving that hardship.3U.S. Department of Justice. Laws We Enforce
Age discrimination has its own statute. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act protects applicants who are 40 or older, but only at companies with 20 or more employees.4U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 Coded language in a job posting like “digital native” or “recent graduate” can serve as evidence of age bias, even if age is never mentioned outright.
The Americans with Disabilities Act requires employers with 15 or more employees to give qualified applicants with disabilities an equal shot at a job, including reasonable accommodations during the hiring process itself. Those accommodations might include large-print interview materials, a sign language interpreter, an accessible interview location, or extra time on a timed assessment.5U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Job Applicants and the ADA When an applicant asks for an accommodation, the employer must engage in what the EEOC calls an “interactive process,” a genuine back-and-forth about what the applicant needs. An employer can refuse a specific accommodation only if it would cause significant difficulty or expense, and even then it must offer an alternative that avoids that hardship. Saying “it costs money” is not enough.
The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which took full effect in 2024, requires covered employers with 15 or more employees to provide reasonable accommodations for limitations related to pregnancy, childbirth, or associated medical conditions, and prohibits denying a job because an applicant needs such an accommodation.6U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. What You Should Know About the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act Retaliating against an applicant for making that request is independently illegal under the same law.
Disparate Impact and AI-Powered Screening
Not every viable claim involves someone intentionally excluding a protected group. Under Title VII, a facially neutral hiring practice that disproportionately screens out applicants of a particular race, sex, religion, or national origin can be illegal even without discriminatory intent. The applicant must identify a specific practice causing the disparity; the employer must then show it is job-related and consistent with business necessity. If the employer meets that burden, the applicant can still win by proposing an alternative that serves the same purpose with less discriminatory effect.1U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
This theory has become central to challenges against AI-powered hiring tools. The EEOC has stated that existing anti-discrimination laws apply to automated hiring systems the same way they apply to human decision-makers.7U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. What is the EEOC’s Role in AI If a resume-screening algorithm filters out older applicants or people with disabilities, the employer using the tool is responsible, even when a third-party vendor built it. Federal courts have begun treating AI hiring vendors as agents of the employers they serve, and a nationwide collective action against one such platform achieved certification in 2025.
Background Check Violations
The Fair Credit Reporting Act sets strict procedures when an employer uses a third-party background check. Before the check runs, the employer must provide a standalone written disclosure that a consumer report may be obtained for employment purposes, and you must authorize it in writing.8Office of the Law Revision Counsel. United States Code Title 15 – Section 1681b Burying that disclosure inside a long application form violates the statute.
The rule employers most often ignore comes later. If the company plans to reject you based even partly on the report, it must first send you a copy of the report and a written summary of your rights, then wait a reasonable period before making a final decision. That two-step “pre-adverse action” and “adverse action” process gives you a chance to dispute inaccurate information. Skipping it creates a viable FCRA claim on its own, regardless of whether the background report was accurate.
False Promises in the Job Offer
When a job advertisement or recruiter describes a position inaccurately and you rely on that description, you may have a misrepresentation claim. If you relocated across the country for a role advertised at a specific salary only to discover the actual pay is far lower, your moving costs and the offers you turned down can form the basis of damages. This often overlaps with a breach-of-contract theory: the offer and your acceptance created mutual obligations.
Fraudulent inducement is stronger and harder to prove. You must show the employer knowingly made false promises to get you to accept. An honest mistake about future promotion opportunities is probably not fraud. Deliberately promising a salary, title, or working conditions the employer never intended to provide likely is. Courts look at the employer’s intent at the moment the promise was made, not at whether circumstances changed later.
The Federal Trade Commission Act’s ban on unfair or deceptive practices may also extend to materially misleading job advertisements.9Federal Trade Commission. Federal Trade Commission Act
Retaliation
Federal law protects applicants, not just current employees, from retaliation for reporting or opposing discriminatory hiring practices. Retaliation is any action that would discourage a reasonable person from coming forward, including refusing to hire someone because they previously filed a discrimination charge against a different employer.10U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Enforcement Guidance on Retaliation and Related Issues These claims are often easier to prove than the underlying discrimination, and you do not have to win the original discrimination claim for the retaliation claim to succeed. Protected activities include filing a formal charge, serving as a witness, requesting a religious or disability accommodation, and making an informal complaint to a manager.
Check for an Arbitration Agreement First
Before anything else, look through the paperwork you signed during the application. Many employers now require applicants to agree that all employment-related disputes will go to private arbitration rather than court. These agreements are generally enforceable and typically reach claims that arise from the application process itself, which means they can pull a hiring lawsuit out of court entirely.
One important exception exists. The Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act, signed in March 2022, lets a person alleging sexual harassment or sexual assault void a pre-dispute arbitration agreement and go to court instead.11United States Congress. H.R.4445 – Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act of 2021 The choice belongs to the accuser, not the employer. Courts remain split on whether the exception voids the arbitration agreement only for the harassment claim or for the entire lawsuit when other claims are joined.
Even under a broad arbitration agreement, filing a charge with the EEOC is usually still permitted. So are workers’ compensation and unemployment insurance proceedings.
How to File a Charge With the EEOC
For most discrimination claims tied to hiring, you cannot walk straight into federal court. You have to file a charge of discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission first.12U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Filing a Charge of Discrimination The charge is a signed statement describing what happened. You can file online, by mail, or in person at a field office.
The deadline is 180 calendar days from the date of the discriminatory act. That window extends to 300 days if a state or local agency enforces a similar law, which is the case in most states. For ADEA age discrimination claims, the extension to 300 days applies only if a state law (not merely a local ordinance) prohibits age discrimination and a state agency enforces it.13U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Time Limits for Filing a Charge Missing the deadline almost always ends the claim regardless of how strong the evidence is.
After the agency investigates, one of two things happens. If it finds insufficient evidence, it issues a Dismissal and Notice of Rights, and you have 90 days to file your own lawsuit in federal court. If it finds reasonable cause but cannot resolve the matter through conciliation, it may file suit itself or issue a Notice of Right to Sue, again giving you 90 days.14U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. What You Can Expect After a Charge Is Filed The 90-day clock runs from when you receive the notice, and courts read it strictly. Filing on day 91 is a common and avoidable way to lose.
FCRA claims, misrepresentation, and breach-of-contract claims generally do not require an EEOC charge; you can typically go directly to court, subject to the state’s statute of limitations.
What You Can Recover
Federal law caps combined compensatory and punitive damages for intentional discrimination based on employer size:15Office of the Law Revision Counsel. United States Code Title 42 – Section 1981a
- 15 to 100 employees: $50,000
- 101 to 200 employees: $100,000
- 201 to 500 employees: $200,000
- More than 500 employees: $300,000
The caps cover future lost income, emotional distress, and punitive damages combined. They do not limit back pay, which is calculated separately and has no statutory ceiling. For someone denied a high-paying job, back pay alone can exceed the cap on other damages. These caps apply to Title VII and ADA claims. The ADEA works differently: it does not allow compensatory or punitive damages for private-sector employees, but it does allow liquidated damages (essentially double back pay) for willful violations.
Punitive damages require malice or reckless indifference. A sloppy HR decision usually will not qualify. A company that keeps excluding a protected group while knowing it is breaking the law is a stronger candidate.
Courts can also order non-monetary relief: revised hiring policies, anti-discrimination training, or an order to offer the job to the applicant who was wrongfully denied. Many hiring disputes settle before trial, often combining a payment with changes to company procedures.16U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Remedies for Employment Discrimination
Proving You Were Actually Harmed
A legal theory only gets you so far. You still have to show a concrete loss the employer caused, and that is harder when you were never hired in the first place than when you were fired from a job you already had.
Lost wages are the core of most claims: the income you would have earned. If you turned down another offer relying on the employer’s now-broken promise, the difference between what you would have earned and what you actually earned drives the number. Relocation expenses, interview travel, and recruiter fees may also count.
Documentary evidence matters. Emails from the recruiter promising a specific salary, written offers, recorded interview statements, and internal communications showing discriminatory intent decide cases. Testimony from other applicants who experienced similar treatment can establish a pattern that strengthens both the discrimination claim and the damages calculation.
Emotional distress damages are possible but require more than frustration. Courts look for evidence of genuine psychological harm, often supported by testimony from a mental health professional, and these awards tend to come in cases where the employer’s conduct was especially egregious or prolonged.