Fort Bend County v. Davis
The Court ruled that Title VII's requirement to first file a discrimination charge with the EEOC is not a 'jurisdictional' rule that can be raised at any time, but a normal procedural rule that an employer can lose the right to raise by waiting too long.
Because Fort Bend County waited years before objecting that a worker's religion-discrimination claim had never been properly raised with the EEOC, it forfeited that objection, and the worker's lawsuit could go forward.
How it got here: A federal trial court dismissed Davis's religion claim as jurisdictionally barred; the Fifth Circuit reversed, finding the charge-filing rule nonjurisdictional and forfeited; Fort Bend sought Supreme Court review.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Lois Davis worked in information technology for Fort Bend County, Texas. She reported her supervisor's boss for sexual harassment, and after he resigned, her direct supervisor allegedly retaliated against her. When she was fired after missing a Sunday shift to attend a church event, she tried to add a religion-discrimination claim by handwriting a note on an EEOC intake form, but never formally amended her charge before suing.
The question before the Court
If an employer waits years to argue that a worker's discrimination lawsuit was never properly filed with the EEOC, can it still get the case thrown out?
The Court's answer
No — once an employer waits too long, it loses the ability to raise the objection. The Court ruled that Title VII's requirement to first file a charge with the EEOC before suing is not a jurisdictional rule that strips a court of power to hear the case; it is instead an ordinary "claim-processing rule." Courts must enforce such rules if a party raises them promptly, but a party can forfeit the objection by waiting too long.
Because Fort Bend County did not challenge whether Davis's EEOC charge covered religion discrimination until years into the litigation — after a full round of appeals — it forfeited that objection. The case could therefore proceed on the merits of Davis's religion-discrimination claim, and the Fifth Circuit's ruling allowing the suit to continue was affirmed.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Employers who want to challenge whether a worker properly filed an EEOC charge before suing now must raise that objection early in the litigation or risk losing it entirely. Workers pursuing discrimination and retaliation claims gain protection against employers who sit on this argument for years and spring it late in a case.
What changes now
The Fifth Circuit's ruling that Fort Bend forfeited its objection stands, so Davis's religion-based discrimination claim may proceed in the trial court. This is a final decision resolving the jurisdictional question nationwide, ending a split among federal appeals courts; going forward, employers must raise EEOC charge-filing objections promptly or risk losing them.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide whether Davis's original EEOC charge actually covered religion-based discrimination, nor did it decide when exactly an objection becomes "too late." It held only that the charge-filing requirement is a claim-processing rule, not that Fort Bend's particular objection was necessarily forfeited on these facts (that determination came from the Fifth Circuit).
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court explained that the label 'jurisdictional' is reserved for rules defining which kinds of cases a court may hear (subject-matter jurisdiction) or which people a court may bind (personal jurisdiction), and that Congress must clearly mark a requirement as jurisdictional for courts to treat it that way.
- The Court distinguished jurisdictional rules from mandatory claim-processing rules — procedural steps parties must follow, and which courts must enforce if a party raises an objection in time, but which are forfeited if the objection comes too late.
- The Court noted that Title VII's charge-filing requirement appears in provisions separate from the statute's actual grants of federal-court jurisdiction (28 U.S.C. §1331 and Title VII's own jurisdictional provision), and that those charge-filing provisions speak only to a complainant's procedural obligations, not to a court's authority to hear the case.
- The Court found this charge-filing rule similar to other requirements it had already classified as nonjurisdictional, such as rules requiring parties to register a copyright before suing or to raise objections during agency rulemaking before raising them in court.
- The Court rejected Fort Bend's arguments that the requirement's placement near a jurisdictional provision, or its role in encouraging EEOC conciliation, made it jurisdictional, concluding instead that it is a mandatory but forfeitable claim-processing rule.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Distinguishes Elgin v. Department of Treasury (567 U. S. 1)
The Court said this case about routing claims to an agency first did not address whether a filing precondition is jurisdictional.
Reaffirms Zipes v. Trans World Airlines, Inc. (455 U. S. 385)
The Court relied on this earlier ruling that Title VII's time limit for filing an EEOC charge is nonjurisdictional.