How Long Do You Have to File an Employment Claim in New York?

How long do you have to file an employment claim in New York?

It depends on which claim you are bringing, and the deadlines are not close to each other. A federal discrimination charge must reach the EEOC within 300 days, New York State and New York City Human Rights Law claims generally allow three years to file in court, and unpaid wage claims under the New York Labor Law reach back six years.

The practical consequence is that a single firing can generate three claims with three different expiration dates. The shortest deadline that applies to a given claim is the one that decides whether that claim survives, and it is running right now, whether or not you have decided to do anything about it.

When does the clock actually start?

On the date of the adverse action, not the date you understood it was unlawful, and not the date an internal process ended.

For a termination, courts generally start counting when you are told you are being fired, even if you keep working for several more weeks. For a failure to promote, it starts when the decision is communicated. For a denied accommodation, it starts when the denial is made clear.

Three things that do not stop the clock:

• An open HR investigation Employers often ask employees to “let the process play out.” The process has no effect on a statutory deadline.
• An internal appeal or grievance, unless a union contract independently requires it and separately preserves the claim.
• Ongoing settlement or severance discussions Negotiations do not toll a limitations period unless the employer signs a written tolling agreement.

There are limited exceptions. Under the continuing violation doctrine, a hostile work environment claim can reach back to earlier acts as long as at least one contributing act falls inside the filing window, because a hostile environment is treated as a single unlawful practice rather than a series of separate ones. And for pay discrimination, each discriminatory paycheck can restart the clock under the federal Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Neither exception is something to rely on before a lawyer has looked at the dates.

What is the deadline for a discrimination or harassment claim?

The federal deadline is the tight one: 300 days to file a charge with the EEOC. New York is what the EEOC calls a deferral state, because it has its own fair employment agency, and that extends the baseline 180-day period to 300. Filing that charge is a prerequisite. You cannot go straight to federal court on a Title VII, ADA, or ADEA claim without it. Once the EEOC issues a right-to-sue letter, you have 90 days to file suit, and that 90-day window is enforced strictly.

State and city law are more forgiving. Claims under the New York State Human Rights Law and the New York City Human Rights Law generally allow three years to bring an action in court. Both statutes reach a broader set of employers and, in the City’s case, apply a more employee-protective liability standard than federal law. That combination means employees who have blown the federal deadline frequently still have a viable claim, which is why a case that looks dead on the federal calendar is worth a second look under state and city discrimination law.

One caution. You can pursue a Human Rights Law claim either administratively or in court, but not both. Filing a complaint with the New York State Division of Human Rights or the New York City Commission on Human Rights generally forecloses a later lawsuit on the same claim under New York’s election-of-remedies rule. That is a decision to make deliberately, not by accident, because the administrative route and the court route offer meaningfully different remedies and timelines. We set out the full comparison, the three narrow exceptions that preserve the right to sue, and why an EEOC charge does not trigger the same bar, in [where to file a discrimination complaint in New York](/practice- areas/where-to-file-eeoc-or-nysdhr). The same analysis applies to sexual harassment claims, which arise under the same statutes.

How far back can you recover unpaid wages?

Six years, under the New York Labor Law (among the longest wage limitations periods in the country). The federal Fair Labor Standards Act allows only two years, or three where the violation was willful, which is why most New York unpaid overtime and wage cases are filed under both statutes: the FLSA supplies a nationwide collective-action mechanism, and the Labor Law supplies the six-year reach-back.

The length matters more than it sounds. The FLSA requires overtime at one and a half times the regular rate for hours over 40 in a workweek. If an employer shaved an hour a week off your time for four years, the federal statute reaches maybe three of those years and the state statute reaches all of them. New York also allows liquidated damages equal to 100% of the wages owed under Labor Law § 198(1-a), so the extra years compound.

What about retaliation, contract, and whistleblower claims?

Retaliation follows the deadline of the statute it arises under. Retaliation for a protected complaint about discrimination runs on the same 300-day EEOC clock federally and the same three years under state and city law. Retaliation for a wage complaint follows Labor Law timing. This is worth knowing because retaliation is a separate claim from the conduct you originally reported, with its own start date: the date of the retaliatory act, not the date of the underlying misconduct.

Breach of contract (an employment agreement, an offer letter, a commission plan, an unpaid severance promise) generally carries six years in New York. Employees who miss discrimination deadlines sometimes still have a live contract claim, particularly around unpaid severance or bonus terms.

Whistleblower claims under New York Labor Law § 740 have their own, shorter window: generally two years from the retaliatory action. The statute was substantially broadened in recent years, but the deadline was not extended to match the Human Rights Laws.

What if you think you have already missed a deadline?

Ask before assuming. In our experience the most common reason a viable claim goes unfiled is that someone counted from the wrong date, or counted only the shortest deadline and concluded everything was gone.

Three questions usually change the answer:

1. Which act are you counting from? If the conduct continued after the event you have in mind (a later demotion, a later denied accommodation, a later paycheck), the clock may run from the later act.
2. Are there claims you have not considered? The same facts often support a wrongful termination claim, a retaliation claim, a wage claim, and a contract claim, on four different calendars.
3. Does a longer statute cover the same conduct? Race claims under § 1981 require no EEOC charge at all and generally carry four years for conduct after hiring: harassment, discipline, demotion, termination. Claims about the making of the employment relationship, most importantly a refusal to hire, borrow New York’s three-year personal-injury period instead. See race discrimination.

If you are inside the window, the practical advice is the same regardless of claim type: preserve your documents now, write down the dates while you remember them, and do not sign a severance agreement before someone has read it.

To see roughly where you stand, our filing deadline checker applies the published limitations periods to a single date you enter. Treat what it returns as earlier than shown: it cannot see whether the conduct continued, whether a deadline was paused, or whether a contract or arbitration agreement shortened it.

Deadlines are the one part of an employment case that cannot be fixed later. Tell us what happened. The case evaluation is free, and it takes very little time to find out which clock you are actually on.