EEOC workplace rights — by state

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) received 88,531 new workplace-discrimination charges in FY 2024. The agency secured nearly $700 million in monetary relief for more than 21,000 people, including: over $469.6 million for 13,516 private-sector and state/local-government workers through mediation, conciliation and settlements, more than $190 million for 3,041 federal employees and applicants, and over $40 million for 4,304 individuals through litigation.

Deadlines: the federal floor is 180 days from the alleged violation to file an EEOC charge, and the EEOC extends it to 300 days “if there is a state or local anti-discrimination law that covers the location of the alleged harm and the basis for the charge.” Read off every EEOC office’s own timeliness tab on September 9, 2026, that longer deadline applies in 49 of the 52 jurisdictions this matrix covers; Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi are the three at 180 days, and a few offices publish a shorter deadline for age claims (Indianapolis for Indiana, Minneapolis for South Dakota). The per-state number is rendered on each state page from website/data/eeoc_field_offices.json. For Equal Pay Act claims: 2 years (3 years for willful violations). ADA failure-to-accommodate charges run on the same 180/300-day clock, from the most recent denial.

Settlements can include: back pay (which cannot accrue from a date more than two years before the charge was filed, 42 U.S.C. 2000e-5(g)(1)), front pay, reinstatement, hiring, compensatory damages (capped at $50,000-$300,000 by employer size for Title VII), punitive damages (intentional discrimination), and attorneys’ fees. The EEOC public portal at publicportal.eeoc.gov supports filing in English and Spanish. Reach the EEOC at 1-800-669-4000 (TTY 1-800-669-6820; ASL video phone 1-844-234-5122).

Coverage is statutory; the non-inquiry commitment is policy. Undocumented workers are covered by the federal employment discrimination statutes, and the EEOC says Hoffman “in no way calls into question the settled principle that undocumented workers are covered.” Separately, and as agency policy rather than statute, the EEOC states that it “will not, on its own initiative, inquire into a worker’s immigration status” and will not “consider an individual’s immigration status when examining the underlying merits of a charge.” Remedies are where Hoffman bites: in 2002 the EEOC rescinded its 1999 remedies guidance, writing that “[t]he Court’s holding bars an award of backpay under the NLRA to an undocumented worker for any period following the termination of his or her employment,” and it has published no replacement guidance since, so what other monetary relief survives is unsettled. USCIS Form I-9 violations by employers are separately enforceable through the Department of Justice’s Immigrant and Employee Rights Section (IER); IER publishes two hotlines and no email address — the worker hotline is 1-800-255-7688 and the employer hotline 1-800-255-8155 (justice.gov/crt/immigrant-and-employee-rights-section, read September 9, 2026).