EEOC Charge Deadlines: Why "180 Days" and "300 Days" Are Both Right, Depending on Your State
Search "EEOC filing deadline" and you'll find confident, contradictory answers: some say 180 days, others say 300. Both are correct — they're just answering for different people. Which one governs your specific charge depends on a fact most people never think to check: whether your state has its own fair employment agency covering the same kind of discrimination.
180 days is the federal floor
The baseline rule under federal law is 180 calendar days from the date of the discriminatory act to file a charge with the EEOC. For an ongoing pattern — harassment, for example — the clock generally runs from the most recent incident, though the EEOC can consider the full pattern once a timely charge covering it is filed.
300 days when a state agency has jurisdiction
Congress extended that deadline to 300 days for any state or locality with its own Fair Employment Practices Agency (FEPA) — a state-level body with authority to investigate and remedy the same kind of discrimination the EEOC handles. The logic: give the state agency's own process room to run before the federal clock closes it out. Because the vast majority of states now have some form of FEPA, 300 days is the deadline that actually applies to most charges filed today — but "most" is not "all," and the exceptions are exactly where people get burned.
A small number of states are genuine exceptions — and sources don't fully agree on the edges
Alabama, Arkansas, and Mississippi are the states most consistently identified as lacking a FEPA covering most private-sector claims, meaning the shorter 180-day deadline is the one that actually controls there. Beyond that core group, different legal resources disagree at the margins about a handful of other states and specific claim types — which is itself useful information: if even specialized employment-law sites can't fully agree on your state's status, that's a signal to confirm directly with the EEOC rather than trust any single online chart, including this one.
The safest move: treat 180 days as your working deadline unless you've confirmed otherwise
Because a missed EEOC deadline generally cannot be revived, the conservative play whenever there's any doubt is to treat the earlier, 180-day date as your real deadline and file well before it — rather than banking on the extended 300-day window without confirmation. Filing early costs nothing; discovering after the fact that your state didn't have the FEPA coverage you assumed costs the entire claim.
Check both dates before you decide
The EEOC Charge Filing Deadline calculator takes the date of the last discriminatory act and your state, and returns both the 180-day and 300-day dates side by side, along with guidance on which is more likely to govern. Use it to see your actual runway on both scenarios, then confirm the one that applies to your specific claim with the EEOC or a local employment attorney well before either date arrives.