Take the First Step
June 16, 2026 · Benjamin J. Treger
How Long You Have to Act on a California Employment Claim
People wait. They wait because they hope things will get better. They wait because they are embarrassed, or exhausted, or busy finding a new job. They wait because they assume a lawyer will be expensive. And then, months or years later, they finally pick up the phone and learn that the law gave them a window, and the window closed.
We would rather tell you now. Every employment claim in California has a deadline, called a statute of limitations. Miss it, and it does not matter how strong your case was. Here are the deadlines that matter most, explained in plain terms, followed by the reasons you should not wait even when the deadline is far away.
Most workplace discrimination, harassment, and retaliation claims in California are brought under the Fair Employment and Housing Act, or FEHA. Before you can sue under FEHA, you have to file a complaint with the state’s Civil Rights Department (CRD) and get what is called a right-to-sue notice.
You have three years from the date of the unlawful act to file that complaint with the CRD. For a termination, that usually means three years from your last day. For harassment, the clock generally runs from the most recent incident, and a pattern of related conduct can sometimes pull older incidents in.
Then you have one year from the date the CRD issues your right-to-sue notice to file a lawsuit in court. You can ask for the notice immediately, which most attorneys do, so in practice the one-year clock often starts as soon as you decide to move forward.
Federal law has its own agency, the EEOC, and a much shorter window: 300 days in California. Because FEHA is broader and more protective, most California employees do not need a federal claim, but if your situation calls for one, that shorter deadline controls.
Not every wrongful termination case goes through FEHA. If you were fired for a reason that violates public policy (refusing to break the law, reporting illegal conduct, serving on a jury, filing a workers’ compensation claim), you may have a direct claim in court with a two-year deadline from the date of termination. No agency filing is required, but there is also no three-year cushion. Many people with FEHA claims also have one of these, and a careful attorney will file within the shorter window to preserve both. Our post on Wrongful Termination in California explains the different kinds of claims.
If you were punished for reporting what you reasonably believed was illegal conduct, California’s whistleblower statute gives you three years to file in court, and you do not need to go through the CRD. A separate option, a retaliation complaint with the Labor Commissioner, must be filed within one year. Retaliation for filing a workers’ compensation claim has its own one-year deadline before the Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board. If any of this sounds like your situation, read You Reported It. Then They Retaliated. and talk to someone soon.
Wage claims are measured differently. Instead of one deadline, think of a lookback window. For unpaid overtime, minimum wage, meal and rest break premiums, unreimbursed expenses, and late final pay, you can generally recover what you are owed for the three years before you file. Under California’s unfair competition law, that window can extend to four years for the wages themselves. The window slides: every month you wait, the oldest month of unpaid wages falls out of reach.
Some wage-related penalties are shorter. Penalties for inaccurate pay stubs have a one-year limit, and claims under the Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA), which let one employee recover penalties on behalf of coworkers, must be started within one year of the last violation. If you have not left the job, the clock is still running on current violations, but the old ones are quietly expiring.
A claim for breach of a written contract, such as an employment agreement or a commission plan, has a four-year deadline. A claim based on an oral agreement has two years. If you signed a severance agreement with a release, the question is usually not a deadline but whether the release is enforceable, which is a conversation worth having before you sign. See Your Severance Agreement Is Not a Gift.
If you work for a city, county, school district, state agency, or other public employer, some claims against your employer require a government claim to be filed first, often within six months. FEHA claims are exempt from that requirement, but many others are not. If you are a public employee, do not wait to get advice.
Deadlines generally run from the date of the harmful act, not the date you realized it was illegal. For a termination, that is your last day of work, not the day you received a severance offer or the day you learned who replaced you. For unpaid wages, each paycheck is its own violation with its own clock. For harassment, it is the last act in the pattern.
There are doctrines that can extend a deadline: the continuing violation rule, equitable tolling while you pursue a related remedy, and others. They exist, they are real, and they are the last thing you want to rely on. Courts apply them narrowly. Treat the shortest possible deadline as the real one.
Three years sounds like plenty. In our experience, it is not the deadline that damages most cases. It is what disappears while people wait.
Evidence disappears. Companies routinely delete email and messaging data after a set period, sometimes as short as a year. Security footage is overwritten in weeks. Your own access to work systems ends the day you leave. The text thread with your manager, the Slack message, the schedule that proves you worked through lunch: these are easiest to gather now and may be impossible to gather later.
Witnesses scatter. The coworker who saw what happened changes jobs, moves away, or simply forgets the details. A witness who gives a clear account six weeks after the event is far more valuable than one trying to reconstruct it two years later.
Your employer gets its story straight. Early on, an employer’s explanation for what happened is often inconsistent and poorly documented. Given time, performance reviews get “updated,” files get built, and the narrative hardens.
Your bargaining position weakens. A claim raised promptly, with evidence preserved, often settles without a lawsuit. A claim raised at the last minute signals to the other side that you may not be ready to litigate.
If you think something unlawful happened at work, write down the date it happened. That single date determines most of what is written above. Then gather what you can: emails forwarded to a personal account, screenshots, pay stubs, your offer letter and handbook, and the names of people who saw what happened. Our post I Think I Was Fired for the Wrong Reasons. Now What? covers what to preserve in the first 48 hours.
Then talk to an employment attorney, even if you are not sure you want to pursue anything. A consultation does not commit you to a lawsuit. It tells you what your deadlines are, which claims you have (there are often more than one), and what the case may be worth. At Treger Legal, that consultation is free and confidential, and we work on contingency. You pay nothing unless we win. The only thing waiting costs you is options.
This post is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Deadlines depend on the specific claim and facts, and some are shorter than those described here. Consult with a qualified employment attorney promptly about your specific situation.