Title VII Retaliation claim is reinstated on appeal

The Court of Appeals has revived a retaliation claim under Title VII and Section 1983, holding that the district court got it wrong in dismissing the claim as time-barred.

The case is Connolly v. City of New York, a summary order issued on March 22. Under the rules, you have 300 days from the date of the discriminatory or retaliatory act to file a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or the EEOC. Once the EEOC is done processing the charge, usually within 180 days, you can file a lawsuit under Title VII. That 300 day deadline is sacrosanct, except when it isn't.

The courts have carved out an exception to the 300-day rule when you are suing for retaliation and did not file an EEOC charge for that claim. So long as you filed an original EEOC charge for the underlying discrimination, your failure to file another EEOC charge alleging retaliation for the original EEOC charge is not fatal to the claim. This is true so long as the original EEOC charge is still pending before the agency. One reason for this rule, I am sure, is to prevent multiple EEOC charges for the same series of events. The other reason, most often cited by the courts as the justification, is that the retaliation most likely will come up while the EEOC investigates the charge in any event. That makes the retaliation "reasonably related" to the original EEOC charge. 

The district court overlooked the "reasonably related" doctrine in dismissing the retaliation claim as time-barred. But the "reasonably related" principle is now several decades old. The law is so settled in this area that, the Court of Appeals (Raggi, Lynch and Lohier) notes, the City of New York did not even argue that the case law in this area, including Duplan v. City of New York, 888 F.3d 612 (2d Cir. 2018), are incorrect. The retaliation claim survives and will now proceed to discovery.