How to Sue an Employer for Wrongful Termination: EEOC Steps and Damages

To sue an employer for wrongful termination, you almost always start by filing a charge with a government agency, not a court. For discrimination and retaliation claims, that means filing with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission within 180 days of your firing (300 days in most states), waiting for a Notice of Right to Sue, and then filing your lawsuit within 90 days of receiving that notice.¹² Miss either deadline and a court will likely throw out even a strong case. What follows walks through when a firing is actually illegal, how to protect your claim before you file, and what recovery realistically looks like.

Was Your Firing Actually Illegal

Most U.S. employment is at-will, meaning your employer can let you go for nearly any reason. A wrongful termination claim only exists when the firing falls into one of a few illegal categories.

Federal law prohibits firing someone because of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age (40 or older), disability, or genetic information.³ Sex covers pregnancy, sexual orientation, and gender identity. The protections come from Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act,⁴ the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act.⁵

Retaliation is the other main category. An employer cannot fire you for a protected activity: reporting workplace harassment, filing a workers’ compensation claim, whistleblowing on illegal activity, or participating in a discrimination investigation. A firing that happens shortly after one of these activities can itself help prove the termination was retaliatory.

Two other paths exist. If you have a written employment contract limiting when you can be fired, a termination outside those terms is a breach of contract; an implied contract can sometimes arise from handbook language promising “just cause” firings. And employers cannot fire you for reasons that violate public policy, like refusing to break the law or exercising a legal right such as voting or jury duty.

You also don’t have to be formally fired. If working conditions became so intolerable that no reasonable person would stay and you resigned, courts can treat that as a firing. This is called constructive discharge and supports the same claims as a traditional termination.

Deal With Any Severance Agreement Before You File

If your employer offered severance in exchange for a release of claims, that document controls what you can still do. Signing one doesn’t automatically kill your case, but a court will evaluate whether you signed knowingly and voluntarily. A valid release generally must offer something of value beyond what you were already owed and cannot waive claims that haven’t happened yet.⁶

Even after signing, you can still file a charge with the EEOC. No agreement between you and your employer can prevent participation in an EEOC investigation, and you cannot be forced to return your severance pay before filing.⁶

If you’re 40 or older, additional protections apply under the Older Workers Benefit Protection Act. Any waiver of age discrimination claims must specifically mention your ADEA rights, advise you in writing to consult an attorney, and give you at least 21 days to review (45 days if the waiver is part of a group layoff). You get at least 7 days after signing to revoke the agreement, and that revocation period cannot be shortened.⁷ If your employer skipped any of these steps, the waiver may be invalid.

If you haven’t signed yet and suspect the firing was illegal, talk to an attorney first. A generous-looking offer can be a fraction of what the claim is worth.

Gather Evidence Before Access Disappears

Start collecting evidence the moment you suspect your termination was unlawful. Access to company email, internal systems, and files typically ends the day you’re let go.

Pull together your offer letter, any employment contracts, and the employee handbook. Those documents may contain termination procedures your employer failed to follow. Performance reviews and disciplinary records are especially valuable if they show positive feedback that contradicts the stated reason for firing you.

Save every relevant communication: emails, texts, voicemails with supervisors or HR, and your written termination notice. If the explanation was verbal, write down what was said as soon as possible. A dated journal of conversations leading up to the firing can serve as persuasive evidence. Collect contact information for coworkers who witnessed relevant events.

Once you have an attorney, they can send your former employer a preservation letter demanding the company retain all documents and electronic records related to your employment. That letter puts the employer on notice that destroying evidence carries legal consequences, and it can prevent the “routine deletion” of records that would otherwise undermine your case.

Step One: File a Charge With the EEOC

For discrimination and retaliation claims, you cannot go straight to court. Federal law requires you to file a formal charge with the EEOC first.³ This administrative step gives the agency the first opportunity to investigate or resolve the dispute.

The 180- or 300-Day Deadline

You generally have 180 calendar days from your termination to file. That extends to 300 days if a state or local agency enforces an anti-discrimination law covering the same type of claim. For age discrimination specifically, only a state (not local) age discrimination law triggers the 300-day extension.¹ Most states have fair employment agencies, so 300 days applies more often than 180, but confirm which one applies to you early.

How to File and What Happens Next

The EEOC accepts charges through its online Public Portal, in person at a field office, or by mail. The process typically starts with an intake interview.³ Within 10 days of your filing, the EEOC sends your former employer a notice of the charge.⁸ The agency may investigate by requesting documents and interviewing witnesses, or it may offer mediation, a voluntary process where a neutral third party helps both sides negotiate. Mediation can resolve a dispute in weeks rather than years.

When the EEOC finishes, it issues a Notice of Right to Sue. You can also request the notice yourself once 180 days have passed from your filing date, even if the investigation isn’t done; at that point the EEOC is required to issue it.² EEOC investigations can drag on, and requesting the notice puts you back in control of the timeline.

Step Two: File the Lawsuit Within 90 Days

Once you have the Notice of Right to Sue, you have 90 days to file your lawsuit. This deadline is enforced strictly. Miss it and a court will likely dismiss regardless of how strong the underlying claim is.² The clock starts when you receive the notice, not when it was mailed, but proving exactly when you got it can itself become a dispute. Don’t sit on the notice.

The lawsuit begins when your attorney files a complaint with the appropriate state or federal court, laying out the facts, the laws your employer violated, and the damages you’re seeking. A third party, typically a professional process server, then formally delivers the complaint and a court summons to your former employer. This service of process gives the employer official notice and a deadline to respond.

Contract-based claims and public policy claims follow a different path. These typically don’t require an EEOC charge first, but they have their own statutes of limitations that vary by jurisdiction. A breach of a written contract generally has a longer filing window than a discrimination claim. Court filing fees to open a civil case vary by jurisdiction but usually run a few hundred dollars.

What the Timeline and Process Actually Look Like

Employment lawsuits are not quick. Most take one to three years from the initial EEOC filing to resolution, and cases with appeals stretch longer.

After the employer files a response, the case enters discovery, the longest phase of most employment lawsuits, often lasting six months to a year. Both sides exchange written questions (interrogatories), requests for documents like internal emails and HR files, and depositions, which are formal interviews where witnesses answer under oath with a court reporter transcribing everything. Cases are built or broken here. The emails your employer has to hand over, or a manager’s testimony that contradicts the company’s stated reason for the firing, often decide the outcome long before trial.

After discovery, the employer will almost certainly file a motion for summary judgment asking the court to throw out the case without a trial. The judge decides whether there’s enough evidence for a reasonable jury to rule in your favor. Surviving summary judgment is a major milestone, and most cases that get past it settle shortly after.

The vast majority of employment cases never reach a jury. Settlement talks can happen at any stage but tend to intensify once discovery reveals each side’s evidence. If settlement fails, trial preparation takes additional months, and court backlogs can add further delay. Trials themselves typically last one to two weeks.

What You Can Recover

The point of a wrongful termination lawsuit is to put you as close as possible to where you’d be if the firing never happened.

Back Pay and Front Pay

Back pay covers wages and benefits lost from the date of termination to the date of judgment or settlement. Front pay compensates for future lost earnings when returning to your old position isn’t realistic, either because the relationship is too damaged or the position no longer exists.⁹ Courts prefer reinstatement over front pay when possible, but most plaintiffs aren’t eager to work again for the employer that fired them illegally, and courts recognize that.

Compensatory and Punitive Damages, With Caps

In cases of intentional discrimination, you may also recover compensatory damages (for emotional distress and other non-wage losses) and punitive damages (to punish the employer). Federal law caps the combined total of these damages based on employer size:¹⁰

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 apply to claims under Title VII, the ADA, and GINA. They do not apply to back pay or front pay, which are uncapped. For age discrimination under the ADEA, compensatory and punitive damages aren’t available at all, but you can receive liquidated damages equal to your back pay award, effectively doubling it.¹¹

One important exception for race discrimination: you can also bring a claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1981, which has no cap on compensatory or punitive damages and doesn’t require filing with the EEOC first. Its statute of limitations varies because courts borrow the most similar deadline from state law, but it’s often longer than the EEOC window. If race was a factor in your termination, an attorney should evaluate whether a Section 1981 claim gives you better leverage.

Your Duty to Look for New Work

You’re legally required to make a reasonable effort to find comparable work while the case is pending. Any wages you earn, or could have earned with reasonable effort, get subtracted from your back pay award. You don’t have to take a demotion or a job far outside your field, but you can’t sit idle and watch damages grow. Employers frequently raise this as a defense, and if they prove you turned down similar work or stopped looking, the court can cut your recovery significantly. Keep a log of every job application, interview, and offer.

How Employment Attorneys Get Paid

Most employment attorneys handle wrongful termination cases on contingency, taking a percentage of what you recover and charging nothing upfront if you lose. Contingency fees generally run from one-third to 40 percent of the total recovery. The attorney typically fronts litigation costs like filing fees, deposition transcripts, and expert witnesses, then reimburses those costs from the award.

Federal anti-discrimination statutes also include fee-shifting provisions that let courts order a losing employer to pay the winning employee’s attorney fees, separately from the damages award. Fee-shifting makes it financially viable for attorneys to take cases where damages might be modest, and it gives employers an extra reason to settle: a trial loss means paying both the damages and the other side’s legal bills.

1
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Time Limits For Filing A Charge
2
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Filing a Lawsuit
3
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Filing A Charge of Discrimination
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 623 – Prohibition of Age Discrimination
5
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008
6
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Q and A – Understanding Waivers of Discrimination Claims in Employee Severance Agreements
7
eCFR. 29 CFR 1625.22 – Waivers of Rights and Claims Under the ADEA
8
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. What You Can Expect After You File a Charge
9
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Front Pay
10
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 1981a – Damages in Cases of Intentional Discrimination in Employment
11
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Remedies For Employment Discrimination