Prior to suing under Title VII or other federal civil rights laws, an aggrieved party must first file an administrative charge of discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The charge must contain allegations sufficient to place the employer on notice of discrimination claims alleged in any subsequent suit. Last week, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals (which includes North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia) dismissed a discrimination lawsuit because its claims related to a different job for the employer not described in the EEOC charge.

In Shafari v. Univ. of Maryland, Baltimore, the plaintiff was a graduate student who filed a charge alleging national origin discrimination in the program in which she was enrolled. However, her lawsuit focused on a research assistant job she held while pursuing her graduate studies. The district court dismissed the suit on the basis that the plaintiff’s EEOC charge did not include any complaints about her research assistant job, and that she had failed to exhaust her administrative remedies by filing a charge describing her alleged treatment at that job.

The Fourth Circuit affirmed the dismissal, noting that the employer did not have the opportunity to address these new allegations during the EEOC investigation. While the lawsuit can contain claims that flow from the EEOC’s investigation, in this situation, the charge failed to place the defendant on notice of claims relating to a separate role served by the plaintiff for the employer.

Reading between the lines, when filing her EEOC charge, the plaintiff may not have initially understood that the agency did not have jurisdiction over discrimination claims relating to her non-employment status as a graduate student. While her subsequent legal counsel may have tried to tie her lawsuit’s claims to her concurrent job for the university, the time period for filing a charge or charge amendment relating to these allegations may have expired.

When facing a federal civil rights lawsuit, employers should carefully review the allegations made in the complaint, and consider seeking dismissal of any claims that do not reasonably relate to the initial EEOC filing.

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