How to Sue Your Employer in California: The Agency Step That Comes First

For discrimination, harassment or retaliation, you usually cannot go straight to court. You file with the Civil Rights Department (CRD) (formerly DFEH) or the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) first, and they issue a right-to-sue notice. Asking for that notice immediately is allowed. It also permanently gives up the free agency investigation, even if you never file the lawsuit.

At a glance

• Two different clocks, and they are nothing alike. One year to sue after a California notice. Ninety days after a federal one.
• Requesting an immediate notice is a waiver. CRD will not investigate afterwards, even if you change your mind.
• Wage claims are different. Most Labor Code claims need no notice at all before suing.
• Three years to bring a CRD complaint for discrimination, harassment and retaliation under state law.
• 300 days for a federal EEOC charge in California, where the EEOC's usual 180-day limit is extended.
• The agency route costs nothing, and CRD can go to court on your behalf.
• Losing does not normally mean paying the employer's legal bill. The statute sets a high bar for that.

Do I have to go to an agency before I can sue my employer?

For most discrimination cases, yes. This step has a name. Lawyers call it exhausting your administrative remedies, and skipping it is one of the few mistakes that can end a strong case on procedure alone.

The Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) is California's main anti-discrimination law. It covers discrimination, harassment and retaliation based on protected characteristics. Under FEHA, you file a complaint with CRD, and CRD issues a right-to-sue notice. Government Code section 12965(c)(1)(D) is what then lets you go to court: it says "the person claiming to be aggrieved may bring a civil action under this part against the person, employer, labor organization, or employment agency named in the verified complaint within one year from the date of that notice."

Read that sentence carefully. The right to sue flows from the notice. Without one, the door is closed.

The federal system works the same way for Title VII, the Americans with Disabilities Act and GINA claims. You file a charge with the EEOC, and the EEOC issues a Notice of Right to Sue.

But this rule is narrower than most websites suggest, and the exception matters to a large share of the people reading this.

Which claims skip the agency entirely?

Most of what you bring under the California Labor Code. Section 244(a) states the default and its limits in the same breath:

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"An individual is not required to exhaust administrative remedies or procedures in order to bring a civil action under any provision of this code, unless that section under which the action is brought expressly requires exhaustion of an administrative remedy. This subdivision shall not be construed to affect the requirements of Section 2699.3."

The default is what most people never hear: no agency step, no waiting letter. Unpaid wages, unpaid overtime, missed meal and rest breaks, unlawful deductions, and whistleblower retaliation under the Labor Code ordinarily go straight to court on that basis.

Two qualifiers sit on top of it. The first is the "unless" clause in the quote above. An individual Labor Code section can write an exhaustion requirement into itself, and where a section does that, the requirement stands. The second is section 2699.3, which keeps its own notice procedure for representative claims. So the useful question is never "is this the Labor Code". It is "does the particular section I am suing under demand an agency step first", and that is a question worth putting to a lawyer rather than assuming either way.

Two federal claims also sidestep parts of the process. For age discrimination under the ADEA you must file a charge, but no right-to-sue notice is required. You can go to court 60 days after filing. And under the Equal Pay Act, the EEOC says plainly: "you don't have to file a charge or obtain a Notice of Right to Sue before filing."

So the honest answer to "do I have to go to an agency first" is: it depends entirely on which law your claim lives under. That is why the same set of facts can produce two claims with two completely different routes to court. If you are owed wages and you were fired for complaining about it, you may have both at once.

Our guides to wage theft in California and unpaid overtime cover the wage side in more detail.

What is a right-to-sue notice, in plain terms?

It is a letter that ends the agency's involvement and opens the courthouse door. It is not a finding that you were wronged. It is not a judgment on whether your case is any good. It says only that the agency is done, and you may now sue.

You can get one two ways.

By waiting. CRD investigates, and issues the notice when it closes the file. The EEOC does the same: "We will give you a Notice of Right to Sue at the time the EEOC closes its investigation."

By asking. You can request one immediately, at the point you file, and receive it without any investigation happening at all.

That second option is where this page earns its keep.

The box most people tick by mistake

When you file with CRD, you can request an immediate right-to-sue notice. It is fast, and to a worried person it looks like the decisive, forward-leaning choice. Plenty of people tick it without registering what it does.

Here is CRD describing that choice in its own words. You:

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"Elect to not exercise your option of having CRD investigate your complaint."

And the consequence is not conditional:

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"If you receive a right-to-sue notice, your complaint will not be investigated by CRD even if you later decide not to file a lawsuit."

Read the last nine words again. The waiver is permanent. Change your mind next month, decide litigation is not for you after all, and the investigation is still gone. There is no route back.

What you are giving up is not nothing. During an investigation CRD gathers evidence from both sides using its own authority rather than yours. It offers "free dispute resolution services". Where it finds reasonable cause, "Prior to filing a lawsuit, CRD typically requires the parties to go to mediation to attempt to reach an agreement to resolve the dispute." And CRD can file suit on your behalf.

What you gain by asking immediately is control and speed. You are not waiting on an agency queue, your one-year clock starts when you decide it starts, and you keep the case in your own hands.

Neither choice is the right one in the abstract. It turns on your facts, your evidence, your deadlines, and whether you intend to bring a lawyer in. The mistake is not picking one option over the other. The mistake is picking without knowing you were choosing.

If you have already requested an immediate notice and you are now reading this with a sinking feeling: that is not fatal. It closes the agency route while leaving the courtroom open. What it does is make the one-year deadline on that notice matter a great deal more.

Ready to talk it through?

If you are holding a notice, or about to file and unsure which box to tick, a conversation before you send anything is worth more than one afterwards. Book a free, confidential consultation and we will walk through where your claim actually sits.

How long do I have? The deadlines, in order

There are two separate clocks and people routinely conflate them. Missing either one can end the claim regardless of what happened to you.

Clock one: getting to the agency.

The three-year CRD figure comes from Government Code section 12960(e)(5), which is where the FEHA employment deadline sits as the statute reads in 2026: a complaint "shall not be filed after the expiration of three years from the date upon which the unlawful practice or refusal to cooperate occurred." The paragraph number is worth quoting properly, because other paragraphs of the same subdivision carry shorter deadlines for other kinds of claim, and a citation to a bare "(e)" points at all of them at once. Your filing date also relates back to the day you submitted the intake form, rather than the day the formal complaint was finally signed.

On the federal side, the EEOC's standard deadline is 180 days, but "The 180 calendar day filing deadline is extended to 300 calendar days if a state or local agency enforces a law that prohibits employment discrimination on the same basis". California has such an agency, so 300 days is the working number here. Age claims follow their own rule about which laws trigger the extension.

Clock two: getting to court after the notice. This is where the two systems diverge sharply.

Ninety days against one year is not a small difference, and the EEOC does not soften it: "Once you receive a Notice of Right to Sue, you must file your lawsuit within 90 days." If that deadline passes, "you may be prevented from going forward with your lawsuit."

People holding both notices are the ones most at risk. The federal clock can run out while the state clock still looks comfortable.

One further wrinkle worth knowing: where a charge is filed with both agencies at once and CRD defers its investigation to the EEOC, Government Code section 12965(e)(1) tolls the state period. Whether that applies to you is a question for a lawyer, not a website.

For how these deadlines interact with a firing specifically, see our detailed piece on how long you have to file a wrongful termination claim in California.

Deadlines can run early. Different claims arising from the same events can expire on different days, and the earliest one governs what is still available to you. If you are anywhere near a limit, do not work it out from a table on the internet.

What actually happens if I let CRD investigate?

The process runs in stages.

Intake. You submit an intake form. That triggers an intake interview with a CRD representative, and it is the date that counts for your deadline.

Filing. If CRD decides your case is within its jurisdiction, it prepares a formal complaint for your signature and serves it on your employer. This is not a finding that anything unlawful happened. It means the allegations are worth investigating.

Investigation. CRD gathers facts and evidence from both sides independently. It may try to resolve things through conciliation or its free dispute resolution services.

Mediation. Where CRD finds reasonable cause, it typically requires the parties to mediate before any lawsuit is filed.

Closure. CRD either closes the case, sending you a Notice of Case Closure with your deadline information, or it files a lawsuit itself.

CRD does not publish how long an investigation takes, and any site quoting you a confident number is guessing. It is not quick.

What do I need before I file anything?

Two things carry most of the weight: a clear record, and the right claim identified.

The record matters more than people expect, because the agency and the employer will both be working from documents. Contemporaneous notes, emails, messages, reviews, pay records and the names of witnesses do the heavy lifting. Our guide on documenting workplace evidence in California covers what to keep, and where the line sits on recording people. California is an all-party consent state. Penal Code section 632 makes it a crime to intentionally record "a confidential communication" without the consent of everyone in it, and the penalty runs to a fine or jail time. The statute is narrower than the folklore around it, though. It excludes anything said in a public gathering, and any "circumstance in which the parties to the communication may reasonably expect that the communication may be overheard or recorded". Whether the conversation you have in mind counts as confidential turns on the circumstances, which is why it is worth asking a lawyer before you hit record rather than after the fact.

Identifying the claim correctly is what determines the route. Types of workplace discrimination and examples of workplace retaliation are useful starting points for working out which category your situation falls into.

You are not required to have a lawyer to file with CRD, the EEOC or the Labor Commissioner. All three are designed to be used by workers directly. What a lawyer changes is which claims get filed, which route gets chosen, and whether the right-to-sue election is made deliberately.

What does it cost to sue my employer?

Filing with the agencies is free. A court case is different, and the fee arrangement depends on the firm. This firm works on contingency, which means no fee unless there is a recovery.

The fear that stops most people is different, though: that losing means paying the employer's legal costs. FEHA does not work that way. Under Government Code section 12965(c)(6) a court "in its discretion, may award to the prevailing party, including the department, reasonable attorney's fees and costs, including expert witness fees". A prevailing defendant, however, gets nothing unless the court finds the action was "frivolous, unreasonable, or groundless when brought, or the plaintiff continued to litigate after it clearly became so."

That is a deliberately high bar. A claim that fails is not automatically a frivolous one.

For what a case may be worth if it does succeed, see what happens if you sue your employer in California. For the path once a lawyer is involved, see what happens after you contact an employment lawyer.

Frequently asked questions

Can I sue my employer without a right-to-sue letter?

It depends on the claim. For discrimination, harassment or retaliation under FEHA, no: Government Code section 12965(c)(1)(D) is what authorizes your civil action. For most claims under the California Labor Code, including unpaid wages and overtime, yes: section 244(a) says an individual "is not required to exhaust administrative remedies or procedures in order to bring a civil action under any provision of this code, unless that section under which the action is brought expressly requires exhaustion of an administrative remedy." That subdivision also preserves section 2699.3's own procedure, so the answer turns on the section you sue under.

How long does it take to get a right-to-sue letter?

If you request an immediate notice at the point of filing, you can receive it without any investigation taking place. If you let the agency investigate, the notice comes when the file closes, and neither CRD nor the EEOC publishes a standard timeframe.

Does asking for an immediate right-to-sue notice hurt my case?

The underlying claim is not weakened by it. What it does is close a door. CRD states that you "elect to not exercise your option of having CRD investigate your complaint," and that your complaint "will not be investigated by CRD even if you later decide not to file a lawsuit." You lose the agency's investigation, its free dispute resolution, and the possibility of CRD suing on your behalf. Whether that trade is worth making depends on your facts.

What is the deadline to file a lawsuit after a right-to-sue notice?

One year from the date of a CRD notice. Ninety days from receipt of an EEOC notice. If you hold both, the federal deadline will arrive first, and it is unforgiving. The EEOC warns that if you do not file in time "you may be prevented from going forward with your lawsuit."

Do I have to complain to HR before I can sue?

There is no general legal requirement to report internally before filing with an agency. An internal report can still matter for other reasons. It can establish that the employer knew, and punishing you for the report can itself be unlawful retaliation. But an unreported problem is not automatically an unclaimable one.

Can I file with both CRD and the EEOC?

Yes. The agencies have a work-sharing arrangement, and a charge is commonly filed with both. Where the charge is filed with both concurrently and CRD defers the investigation to the EEOC, Government Code section 12965(e)(1) tolls the state deadline. The interaction is technical enough that it is worth confirming rather than assuming.

How long do I have to file a discrimination complaint in California?

Three years from the unlawful practice for a CRD complaint under FEHA. Three hundred days for a federal EEOC charge filed in California. Different claims arising from the same events can carry different deadlines, and the earliest governing one decides what is still open to you.

Can I still file if I am not authorized to work in the US?

Yes. The Labor Commissioner's Office states that "California's labor laws protect all workers, regardless of immigration status." Immigration status does not change the wage-claim deadlines set out above, and it does not change the route your claim takes: most Labor Code claims still need no right-to-sue notice, and a FEHA discrimination claim still goes through CRD or the EEOC first. What status does change is the risk calculation around timing and disclosure, and that is worth working through with a lawyer before you file anything rather than after you have filed.

The Law Offices of Jonathan J. Delshad is a Los Angeles based employment law firm representing employees across California in wrongful termination, discrimination, retaliation, harassment, and wage and hour matters. Representing employees is the core of the firm's practice. Mr. Delshad serves as Editor-in-Chief of the California Wrongful Termination Law Review and trained at Latham & Watkins. Recognition includes Super Lawyers (2022 to 2026), Best Lawyers (since 2017), and an Avvo 10.0 "Superb" rating. Reviewed for California employment law accuracy. Last updated: August 17, 2026.

Attorney advertising. This article is educational only and is not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship, which exists only under a signed engagement agreement. Every case is different, and outcomes depend on the specific facts. Deadlines can run early, so consult a lawyer promptly about your situation.