You can sue a company for not hiring you, but only when the rejection falls into one of a few specific legal categories: illegal discrimination, retaliation for protected activity, a violation of the rules governing background checks, or a broken job offer you reasonably relied on. Most rejected applicants have no claim at all, because employers are free to hire whomever they want for reasons the law doesn’t prohibit. Suing a company for not hiring you works only when you can tie the decision to one of those recognized grounds and meet the deadlines that come with it.
Discrimination Based on a Protected Characteristic
The strongest basis for a hiring lawsuit is illegal discrimination. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act makes it unlawful to refuse to hire someone because of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.1U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 The Americans with Disabilities Act extends the same protection to qualified people with disabilities.2U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The ADA – Your Employment Rights as an Individual With a Disability The Age Discrimination in Employment Act covers workers 40 and older. All three are enforced by the EEOC.3U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. What Laws Does EEOC Enforce
One boundary matters before anything else: employer size. Title VII and the ADA apply only to employers with 15 or more employees for at least 20 calendar weeks of the current or preceding year.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 2000e – Definitions The ADEA sets the bar at 20 employees. A 35-year-old passed over for a 25-year-old has no federal age claim, because ADEA protection starts at 40. State and local laws often cover smaller employers and add protected categories federal law doesn’t reach, sometimes down to a single employee, so a company too small for federal coverage may still be reachable under your state’s statute.
Intentional Discrimination
When you claim an employer deliberately rejected you because of a protected characteristic, courts apply the framework from the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green.5Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792 (1973) You first show you belong to a protected group, you were qualified, you were rejected, and the employer kept looking or hired someone outside your group. The employer then has to offer a legitimate, non-discriminatory reason. You then get the chance to show that reason is a cover story.
Direct evidence is rare. Employers seldom put prejudice in writing. Most cases are built from circumstantial pieces: shifting explanations for why you were passed over, a pattern of rejecting applicants from the same group, interview questions that honed in on age or religion, internal communications showing bias. The more pieces you can assemble, the harder it is for the employer to maintain the decision was clean.
Unintentional Discrimination
You don’t always need to prove prejudice. A neutral-looking hiring practice can still violate the law if it disproportionately screens out applicants from a protected group and the employer can’t show the practice is necessary for the job.6Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 U.S. Code 2000e-2 – Unlawful Employment Practices A physical-fitness test that eliminates most female applicants for an office job, or a credit-score cutoff for a role where credit history is irrelevant, could qualify. The employer’s defense is that the practice is job-related and consistent with business necessity. Even then, you can win by showing a less discriminatory alternative would serve the same purpose and the employer refused to adopt it.
Retaliation for Protected Activity
Employers can’t punish you for exercising rights under anti-discrimination laws. If you filed a prior discrimination complaint, took part in an investigation, or supported someone else’s claim, and a prospective employer turned you down because of it, you have a retaliation claim. The Supreme Court in Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Railway Co. v. White held that retaliation covers any employer action harmful enough to discourage a reasonable person from making or supporting a discrimination charge.7Cornell Law Institute. Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway Co. v. White
The challenge is proving the employer knew about your protected activity and acted because of it. Timing matters. An EEOC complaint filed against a former employer in March, followed by rejection in April from a company in the same industry that had initially expressed strong interest, raises an inference. Timing alone is rarely enough, though. Internal communications, statements from people involved in the hiring call, or evidence that the employer contacted your former employer and learned about the complaint strengthen the link.
Background-Check Violations
When an employer uses a third-party consumer report to make a hiring decision, the Fair Credit Reporting Act imposes a specific sequence. Skipping any step gives you grounds to sue, even if the underlying decision not to hire you was perfectly reasonable.
Before pulling the report, the employer has to give you a written disclosure stating that a consumer report will be obtained for employment purposes. That disclosure must stand alone as its own document; bundling it with a liability waiver or other terms violates the statute.8Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1681b – Permissible Purposes of Consumer Reports You must also give written consent before the report is pulled. If something in the report pushes the employer toward rejection, you’re entitled to a pre-adverse-action notice that includes the report and a written summary of your FCRA rights, and a reasonable window to dispute errors before the decision is finalized. A post-adverse-action notice follows the final decision, identifying the reporting agency and explaining your right to a free copy of the report.9Federal Trade Commission. Using Consumer Reports – What Employers Need to Know
Employers trip over these requirements often, and the damages are meaningful. For a willful violation, you can recover actual losses or statutory damages between $100 and $1,000 per violation, plus punitive damages and attorney’s fees.10Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1681n – Civil Liability for Willful Noncompliance Because these violations often affect large numbers of applicants, class actions are common. The FCRA statute of limitations is generally two years from the violation, extended to five years in cases involving willful misrepresentation. Unlike discrimination claims, FCRA lawsuits don’t require an administrative charge first.
Rescinded Offers and Broken Promises
When an employer extends a clear job offer and then pulls it back without a legally valid reason, you may have a breach-of-contract claim. The offer doesn’t need to be a formal written contract. An offer letter specifying a start date, salary, and position is often enough once you’ve accepted it.
Informal promises are harder. If a hiring manager told you the job was yours once you cleared a background check, and you quit your current job or relocated based on that, you may be able to recover under promissory estoppel. The idea is simple: when someone makes a definite promise, you reasonably rely on it, and breaking the promise causes real harm, a court can enforce it even without a formal contract. The promise has to be specific enough that reliance was reasonable. “We’d love to have you on the team” won’t do; a written offer with a start date and salary will.
Damages in these cases typically cover what you lost by relying on the promise: the salary from the job you left, relocation costs, other reliance expenses. Courts usually won’t award the full salary you would have earned in the new role. The focus is on putting you back where you were before you relied.
You Usually Have to File With the EEOC First
This is where many potential plaintiffs stumble. For discrimination and retaliation claims under Title VII, the ADA, and most other federal anti-discrimination statutes, you can’t go straight to court. You first have to file a charge with the EEOC.11U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. How to File a Charge of Employment Discrimination Skip this step and your lawsuit gets thrown out.
The deadline is 180 calendar days from the date of the discrimination, extended to 300 days if your state or local government has its own agency enforcing a similar anti-discrimination law, which most do. For ADEA claims, the 300-day extension applies only if there’s a state law prohibiting age discrimination and a state agency enforcing it.12U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Time Limits For Filing A Charge These deadlines are firm. Missing by a single day can kill an otherwise strong claim.
After investigating, the EEOC may try to resolve the charge, file a lawsuit on your behalf (rare), or issue a right-to-sue letter authorizing you to proceed on your own. Once you have the letter, you have 90 days to file.13eCFR. 29 CFR 1601.28 – Notice of Right to Sue – Procedure and Authority You can request the letter before the investigation finishes if you want to move faster, but you give up the agency’s help in doing so. ADEA claims are the exception: no right-to-sue letter required. You can file suit 60 days after submitting the charge.
What You Can Recover
The goal in a successful discrimination or retaliation claim is to put you where you would have been if the employer had hired you. That starts with back pay for wages and benefits lost from the date of the refusal.14U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Remedies For Employment Discrimination Front pay is possible when hiring or reinstatement isn’t practical. Courts can also order the employer to hire you, change its practices, and cover your attorney’s fees and costs.
For intentional discrimination, you can also seek compensatory damages for emotional distress and punitive damages for especially reckless or malicious conduct. Federal law caps those amounts by employer size:15Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 U.S. Code 1981a – Damages in Cases of Intentional Discrimination
- 15 to 100 employees: $50,000 combined cap on compensatory and punitive damages
- 101 to 200 employees: $100,000
- 201 to 500 employees: $200,000
- More than 500 employees: $300,000
The caps are per person, not per claim, and they don’t include back pay, front pay, or attorney’s fees. A successful claim against a small employer with 50 workers can’t yield more than $50,000 in combined compensatory and punitive damages, no matter how egregious the conduct. The ceiling against a Fortune 500 company is $300,000. Many people are surprised at how low these numbers run, which is one reason settlements tend to turn more on back pay than emotional-distress awards.
There’s also a duty to mitigate. Courts expect you to make reasonable efforts to find comparable work while your case is pending. Whatever you earned, or could have earned with a reasonable search, gets subtracted from your back-pay award. You don’t have to take the first minimum-wage job that appears if you were passed over for a management position, but you do need to show you were actively looking.
What Filing the Lawsuit Looks Like
Once the administrative steps are cleared, you file a complaint in the appropriate court. Federal discrimination and FCRA claims go to federal court. Breach-of-contract claims over rescinded offers typically go to state court, though they can land in federal court when the parties are from different states and the amount in dispute exceeds $75,000.
The complaint sets out the facts and the relief you want. After filing, the court issues a summons that has to be formally served on the employer.16Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 4 – Summons The employer responds, usually with a motion to dismiss or an answer contesting your allegations. If the case clears that stage, both sides enter discovery, exchanging documents and taking depositions. Most employment cases take one to three years from filing to resolution.
The vast majority settle before trial. Settlements can include money, changes to hiring practices, and sometimes an agreement not to contest unemployment benefits. Employment lawyers often take these cases on contingency, collecting a percentage of the recovery (typically 25% to 40%, with a third being the most common) and nothing upfront. If the facts are weak, the difficulty of finding an attorney willing to work on contingency is often the first honest signal about the claim’s strength.