Title VII Administrative Filing Requirements Not Jurisdictional, and Must Be Challenged Through a Timely Defense

On June 3, 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that employers must raise a timely defense in order to challenge administrative charge filing deficiencies under Title VII, as such filing flaws are not jurisdictional in nature. Fort Bend County Texas v. Lois M. Davis.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 requires a complainant to file a charge with the EEOC prior to commencing an action in court. Once a charge is pending 180 days, a complainant may obtain a right to sue letter from the EEOC and file a civil action within 90 days of receipt.

 In this case, Davis, an information technology specialist, filed a charge with the EEOC against Fort Bend County claiming sexual harassment and retaliation. While the charge was pending, Fort Bend fired her for a failure to report to work on a Sunday. Davis alleged she was unable to work due to religious obligations. Davis then amended her EEOC intake questionnaire by adding “religion” and “discharge” to the discrimination claim, but never formally amended the charging document. Following receipt of the right to sue letter from the EEOC, she filed a civil action in federal court claiming both sexual harassment/retaliation, and religious discrimination/discharge. After years of litigation, only the religion based claims remained in the case. Fort Bend then asserted, for the first time, that the religion based claims should be dismissed due to the court’s lack of subject matter jurisdiction. The employer’s argument centered on Davis’ failure to add the religion based claims to her formal EEOC filings, and that such failure removed Davis’ religious based claims from the court’s jurisdiction.

The District Court agreed with the employer, however, the Fifth Circuit reversed. It ruled that a challenge to an alleged deficient administrative filing must be raised in a timely manner as a defense, as such filing failure is not jurisdictional in nature.  The significance is that subject matter jurisdiction challenges can be raised at any time, while defenses must be brought in a timely fashion, or are waived.

The U. S. Supreme Court upheld the Fifth Circuit decision by finding that Title VII’s administrative charge filing requirement, prior to bringing a civil action, is not jurisdictional, but is instead a defense that must be raised in a timely fashion, and if not so raised, is waived. The Court went on to describe other examples of mandatory claim processing rules that are not jurisdictional in nature, but are subject to challenge through timely defenses. These include rules that employers must employ at least 15 employees to be covered by Title VII, or that a charge be filed within 180/300 days of the discriminatory act.

The Court’s ruling illustrates that it is important to determine if a potential challenge is jurisdictional or procedural in nature, and where it is not jurisdictional, a timely defense must be filed, or it will be waived. Here, the employer lost the opportunity to have the case dismissed when it failed to file a defense at the appropriate time.