SEXUAL HARASSMENT: The Risks of Waiting Too Long for the EEOC to Act, and the Need to Comply with State Statutes of Limitations for Related Tort Claims

Employees who experience sexual harassment at work may hesitate before taking action. They may fear retaliation, humiliation, losing their jobs or making an already difficult workplace situation worse. Regardless, these matters are serious, and they should not be ignored or delayed. Employees in Georgia should understand that federal employment claims, such as sexual harassment under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, are subject to strict filing deadlines. In most cases, an employee has 180 days from the alleged discriminatory/harassing act to file a Charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Waiting too long can result in otherwise serious claims no longer being available. However, there is often more to consider in sexual harassment claims than just the 180 day deadline for filing a Charge of Discrimination/Harassment with the EEOC. There may be significant state tort claims as well, such as assault, battery, false imprisonment, invasion of privacy, and intentional infliction of emotional distress, and these state tort claims have statutes of limitations that require lawsuits to be filed within two years from when they occurred. 

A recent matter being handled by Fox & Weiss demonstrates why these deadlines matter. Multiple former employees alleged that the restaurant’s owner created a sexually hostile work environment through repeated sexual comments, unwanted advances, threats, offers of money for sex, unwanted touching, being trapped in confined spaces, and secretly recording the women in the restroom while in various stages of undress, and other inappropriate conduct toward female employees. The female employees originally hired a different law firm, not Fox & Weiss, who filed an EEOC Charge in 2023 on their behalf for sexual harassment and a sexually hostile work environment, based upon conduct that occurred in 2022 and 2023. 

The EEOC took a long time to investigate, and was still considering evidence, position statements and rebuttals in 2024…two years after much of the repeated sexual comments, unwanted advances, threats, offers of money for sex, unwanted touching, being trapped in confined spaces, and secretly recording the women in the restroom occurred. The EEOC eventually made the Determination that there was reasonable cause to find that the Employer violated the law in regard to the Charges of sexual harassment, and in 2026, the EEOC attempted to conciliate the claims by encouraging the Employer to amicable settle the claims with the women, but the Employer would not agree on a reasonable resolution. When the conciliation failed, the EEOC issued the Notices of Rights to Sue in 2026, but by this time more than two years had passed since all of the sexual comments, unwanted advances, threats, offers of money for sex, unwanted touching, being trapped in confined spaces, and secretly recording the women in the restroom occurred. 

The female employees expected that the lawsuit to be filed by their previous attorney would include all of the claims for assault, battery, false imprisonment, invasion of privacy, and intentional infliction of emotional distress, but the two year statute of limitations for filing those claims had expired while the women were waiting for the EEOC to act. These women were legitimately upset, because, the employer has less than 100 employees, and the maximum that each woman could recover under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act is on $50,000 for all of their emotional distress, pain & suffering, humiliation, punitive damages, and other non-economic damages combined. The more valuable claims of assault, battery, false imprisonment, invasion of privacy, and intentional infliction of emotional distress had unlimited damages, but too much time had passed to pursue those claims as part of the Title VII Sexual Harassment lawsuit. Instead of each woman’s claim being worth potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions of dollars, their claims are now limited to just $50,000 plus any lost wages and specific economic losses they can prove. 

The moral of the story is that it is risky to wait for the EEOC to act. If you have state tort claims that are related to your Title VII claim, you must file those state tort claims within their statute of limitations. That might require you to request an early Notice of Right to Sue from the EEOC, before the EEOC finishes its investigation, in order for you to be able to file a lawsuit for all of your claims, including both the federal 

Employees who believe they are experiencing sexual harassment should therefore consider acting promptly rather than waiting. File with the EEOC as soon as possible. You can retain an attorney to do this for you, or you can file yourself at eeoc.gov.  Documenting what happened, reporting the conduct and obtaining advice about the EEOC process early can help preserve not only your sexual harassment claim, but also any related tort claims. If you have any questions, you can make an inquiry on our website, and we would be happy to assist you.