To file a wrongful termination lawsuit, you first confirm your firing fits a legal ground the courts recognize, check whether you signed away your right to sue in an arbitration agreement, preserve evidence, and — for most discrimination and retaliation claims — file a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission before you ever see a courtroom. You have as few as 180 days from the date you were fired to start that administrative process, and once the EEOC issues a Right to Sue letter, a strict 90-day clock begins to file your complaint in court. Missing either deadline can permanently kill an otherwise strong case.
Confirm You Have a Legal Claim
Most employment in the United States is at-will, which means your employer can fire you for almost any reason or no reason at all. A firing is “wrongful” only if it falls into one of the narrow categories the law carves out. Which category applies decides everything that follows: which agency you file with, what deadlines apply, and what damages you can recover.
The common legal grounds include:
- Discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy and sexual orientation), national origin, disability, or genetic information. Age discrimination protections start at age 40. These claims go through the EEOC before you can sue.
- Retaliation for reporting discrimination, filing a safety complaint, requesting a reasonable accommodation, or participating in an investigation. Retaliation is the most frequently filed charge with the EEOC.
- Violation of public policy, recognized in most states when you were fired for refusing to break the law, exercising a legal right such as filing a workers’ compensation claim, performing jury service, or reporting illegal conduct.
- Breach of contract, if you had a written employment contract guaranteeing a fixed term or requiring cause for termination. Some states also recognize implied contracts based on handbook language or verbal promises.
- Whistleblower retaliation under federal statutes protecting employees who report fraud, safety violations, or other illegal conduct. These often have their own filing procedures separate from the EEOC.
Discrimination and retaliation claims under federal law require an administrative charge before you can sue. Breach-of-contract and public-policy claims typically go straight to court. If your situation involves more than one theory, you may need to pursue parallel tracks.
Check for a Mandatory Arbitration Clause
Before doing anything else, dig out every document you signed when you were hired. Many employers require new hires to sign arbitration agreements that force disputes into private arbitration instead of court. If you signed one, it may bar your lawsuit entirely. A surprising number of wrongful termination efforts stall here.
Arbitration agreements are not always enforceable. Courts have thrown them out when the terms were so one-sided they “shock the conscience,” such as agreements that cap the damages you can recover, restrict your ability to gather evidence, or only require the employee to arbitrate while letting the employer go to court. An agreement you had no ability to negotiate, presented on a take-it-or-leave-it basis, can also factor into an unconscionability challenge.
Two federal exceptions exist regardless of what you signed. Transportation workers who play a direct role in moving goods across state lines are exempt from the Federal Arbitration Act. And since March 2022, the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act lets any person alleging sexual harassment or sexual assault elect to bypass a predispute arbitration agreement and bring the claim in court. That choice belongs to the person making the allegation, not the employer.
Preserve Evidence and Records Right Away
Start collecting evidence immediately after you’re fired, or before if you see it coming. The strongest wrongful termination cases are built on documents, not memories. Once you’re locked out of company email and systems, this material becomes much harder to get.
Your personnel file is the foundation. Most states give current and former employees the right to request a copy, often through a simple written request to human resources. These files hold performance reviews, disciplinary records, and commendations that establish your work history. A string of positive evaluations makes it difficult for the employer to later claim you were fired for poor performance.
Beyond the personnel file, preserve anything that shows the context around your firing: emails and messages from supervisors (especially any reflecting bias or discussing the decision to terminate you), your formal termination notice, any severance agreement offered, and pay stubs or benefit statements that document your compensation. That financial information is essential for calculating losses. Build a personal timeline matching key dates to documents so the chronological story holds together.
Send a Preservation Letter
Once you anticipate legal action, send your former employer a written preservation letter (sometimes called a litigation hold notice) demanding they retain all documents and electronic records related to your employment and termination. Employers have a legal obligation to preserve relevant evidence once litigation is reasonably anticipated. If they destroy emails, personnel files, or other records after receiving your letter, courts can impose serious consequences, including allowing the jury to assume the destroyed evidence would have supported your case.
A Word on Recording Conversations
If you’re still employed and considering recording conversations with supervisors, know the legal landscape first. Federal law permits recording when one party to the conversation consents, meaning you can record your own conversations without telling the other person. Roughly a dozen states require all parties to consent. Even in a one-party-consent state, your employer may have an internal policy prohibiting workplace recordings, and violating that policy could get you fired for a legitimate reason, undermining your wrongful termination claim. Check your state’s law and your employee handbook before hitting record.
File a Charge With the EEOC
If your claim is based on discrimination or retaliation under federal law, you cannot skip this step. You must file a Charge of Discrimination with the EEOC before you can sue your employer. The charge is a formal written statement identifying you, your employer, the protected characteristic at issue, and what happened. You can file online through the EEOC’s public portal, in person at a local office, or by mail.
How Long You Have to File
You have 180 calendar days from the date of the discriminatory act to file the charge. The deadline extends to 300 days if a state or local agency enforces a law prohibiting the same type of discrimination. The rules differ slightly for age discrimination: the 300-day window only applies if a state law (not merely a local ordinance) prohibits age discrimination and a state agency enforces it. Most people in states with their own employment discrimination agencies get the 300-day window, but don’t assume. Count from the date you were fired, not the date you decided to take action.
Employer Size Thresholds
Federal anti-discrimination laws only apply to employers above certain sizes. For most claims under Title VII and the Americans with Disabilities Act, the employer must have at least 15 employees for at least 20 calendar weeks in the current or preceding year. Age discrimination under the ADEA requires at least 20 employees. If your former employer falls below these thresholds, federal law may not cover your claim, but your state’s anti-discrimination statute might have a lower bar.
What the EEOC Does With Your Charge
The EEOC may investigate, attempt to settle through conciliation, or offer voluntary mediation. The mediation program is confidential: sessions are not recorded, the mediator’s notes are destroyed afterward, and nothing said during mediation can be used in any later investigation if the case doesn’t settle. If mediation resolves the dispute, you’re done. If it doesn’t, your charge continues through the investigation process.
Claims That Skip the EEOC
Not every wrongful termination claim requires an EEOC charge. If your claim is based on breach of an employment contract, violation of public policy, or certain whistleblower statutes, you can typically file a lawsuit directly.
Whistleblower claims have their own filing paths depending on the statute involved. The False Claims Act protects employees who report fraud against the federal government and provides reinstatement, double back pay, interest, and compensation for litigation costs and attorney fees. You have three years from the date of retaliation to bring an FCA claim, filed directly in federal district court. OSHA administers over 20 other whistleblower protection statutes covering workplace safety through financial fraud, with filing deadlines ranging from 30 to 180 days depending on the specific law. Those complaints go to OSHA rather than the EEOC.
State-law claims like breach of contract or public-policy violations follow your state’s civil filing procedures and statutes of limitations, which vary considerably. Some states give you as little as one year; others allow up to six years for contract claims.
The Right to Sue Letter and the 90-Day Deadline
This is the step that trips up the most people. After the EEOC finishes its process, dismisses your charge, or 180 days pass without resolution, the agency issues a Notice of Right to Sue. You can also request the letter yourself after 180 days if you want to move forward without waiting for the investigation to conclude.
Once the letter arrives, you have exactly 90 days to file your lawsuit in federal or state court. Not 90 business days. Ninety calendar days. Miss it and the court will almost certainly dismiss your case regardless of how strong the underlying facts are. This is the single most important deadline in the process, and it is not flexible. If you haven’t already hired a lawyer, start looking the day the letter arrives.
Draft the Complaint
The complaint is the document that starts your lawsuit. It tells the court who you are, who your employer is, what happened, why it was illegal, and what you want the court to do. For federal discrimination cases, the U.S. Courts provide a standard complaint form for employment discrimination claims, so you don’t need to write it from scratch.
The complaint must lay out your legal theories clearly. If you’re claiming your employer violated Title VII, say so and identify which protected characteristic was involved. If you’re also alleging retaliation, that is a separate count in the same complaint. Attach your Right to Sue letter. Every cause of action needs enough factual detail to show the court your claim is plausible, not just possible.
Damages to Request
The complaint must specify the relief you’re seeking. In wrongful termination cases, that typically includes:
- Back pay: lost wages and benefits from the date you were fired through the date of judgment.
- Front pay: future lost earnings awarded when reinstatement to your old job isn’t practical, such as when the working relationship is too damaged to repair.
- Compensatory damages: compensation for emotional distress, mental anguish, and other non-wage harm caused by the firing.
- Punitive damages: additional damages meant to punish particularly egregious or malicious employer conduct.
Federal Caps on Compensatory and Punitive Damages
Federal law caps the combined total of compensatory and punitive damages by employer size. The caps apply to claims under Title VII and the ADA but do not limit back pay or front pay:
- 15 to 100 employees: $50,000
- 101 to 200 employees: $100,000
- 201 to 500 employees: $200,000
- More than 500 employees: $300,000
These caps were set by statute and have not been adjusted for inflation since 1991, so they are often far lower than people expect. State anti-discrimination laws sometimes allow higher recoveries, which is why many plaintiffs file under both federal and state law.
File the Lawsuit and Serve Your Employer
Once the complaint is ready and the Right to Sue letter is attached, file the document package with the court clerk. The total filing fee for a federal civil action is $405, which includes a $350 statutory fee and a $55 administrative fee. If you cannot afford the fee, you can apply for in forma pauperis status by submitting an affidavit showing you are unable to pay. If granted, the court waives the filing fee entirely. State court filing fees vary but generally fall in the $200 to $450 range.
After filing, the clerk issues a summons, the official notice that your former employer is being sued. You then need to get the summons and a copy of the complaint delivered to the employer through a process called service. Under federal rules, you can serve a corporation by delivering copies to an officer, a managing agent, or any agent authorized to accept legal papers. A professional process server or any person over 18 who is not a party to the case can handle delivery. Process server fees typically run $65 to $110.
Federal Rule 4 also lets you ask the defendant to waive formal service by sending the summons and complaint by mail with a written request. Defendants who agree to waive service get 60 days to respond instead of 21, which gives employers an incentive to cooperate. If the employer does not waive service and must be formally served, they have 21 days from the date of service to file a response or a motion to dismiss.
Keep Looking for Work
Your former employer’s lawyers will use this against you: the duty to mitigate. The law requires you to make reasonable efforts to find comparable work while your case is pending. If you sit at home waiting for a verdict, the court can reduce or eliminate your back pay award. You can win on every legal issue and still walk away with almost nothing if you didn’t look for a job.
Start applying for positions immediately after being fired. Keep a detailed log of every application, interview, and response. Accept reasonable job offers that come along, even if the pay is somewhat lower. Courts look for genuine effort, not perfection, and no one expects you to take a job clearly beneath your qualifications or in a hostile environment.
Watch out for an unconditional reinstatement offer. If your former employer offers you your old job back (or a substantially similar position) with the same pay, benefits, and title, and without requiring you to drop the lawsuit, turning that down without a strong reason generally cuts off your right to back pay accruing after the offer date. An invitation to “reapply” for an open position does not carry the same legal weight, because reapplication offers no guarantee of being hired.
What to Expect After Filing
Filing the complaint is the beginning of the litigation, not the end. Most wrongful termination cases settle before trial, but the case moves through predictable phases before that happens.
In discovery, both sides exchange documents, answer written questions under oath, and take depositions. This is where the evidence you preserved early on pays off. Your employer will be required to produce internal emails, decision-making records, and personnel files. You will face questions about your job search efforts and financial losses.
Employers almost always file a motion for summary judgment asking the court to dismiss the case without a trial. The standard is whether there is any genuine dispute over a material fact. If the evidence, viewed in the light most favorable to you, could allow a reasonable jury to rule in your favor, the case survives and heads to trial. To defeat the motion you cannot rely on the allegations in your complaint alone; you need actual evidence — documents, deposition testimony, and affidavits that show a real factual dispute.
At any point, the employer may make a formal offer of judgment under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 68. If you reject the offer and ultimately receive a judgment less favorable than what was offered, you become responsible for the employer’s costs incurred after the offer date. That does not affect your right to attorney fees if a statute entitles you to them, but it can add thousands to your bill. Any settlement offer deserves serious discussion with your attorney before you accept or reject it.
Getting a Lawyer
You can technically file a wrongful termination suit on your own, but the procedural complexity and the employer’s likely use of experienced defense counsel make legal representation a near-necessity for most people. Employment lawyers work under a range of fee structures. Some take cases on contingency, keeping a percentage (commonly 33% to 40%) of your recovery if you win and nothing if you lose. Others charge hourly, particularly when the expected recovery is modest. Many offer free or low-cost initial consultations to evaluate whether your case has merit.
If you cannot afford a lawyer, legal aid organizations in your area may be able to help, and some bar associations maintain referral lists of employment attorneys willing to take cases pro bono. Consult a lawyer as early as possible. Statutes of limitations and filing deadlines start running from the date of your termination, and an attorney can identify which deadlines apply to your specific claims before any of them expire.