Opinion ID: 773406
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Exhaustion and the Title VII Limitations Period

Text: 66 Title VII requires that an employment discrimination claimant pursue administrative procedures before commencing a lawsuit and imposes a deadline for the initiation of such procedures. See generally 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-16; Briones v. Runyan, 101 F.3d 287, 289-90 (2d Cir. 1996). As indicated in Part I.B. above, federal employees are given 45 days from the date of the alleged discriminatory act in which to initiate administrative review of alleged employment discrimination. See 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-16; 29 C.F.R. § 1614.105. The 45-day period serves as a statute of limitations; thus, as a general rule, claims alleging conduct that occurred more than 45 days prior to the employee's initiation of administrative review are time-barred. See, e.g., Zipes v. Trans World Airlines, Inc., 455 U.S. 385, 393 (1982); Downey v. Runyan, 160 F.3d 139, 145-146 (2d Cir. 1998). 67 An exception to this rule is provided by the continuing violation doctrine. Under that doctrine, if a plaintiff has experienced a 'continuous practice and policy of discrimination,... the commencement of the statute of limitations period may be delayed until the last discriminatory act in furtherance of it.' Gomes v. Avco Corp., 964 F.2d 1330, 1333 (2d Cir. 1992) (quoting Miller v. International Telephone & Telegraph Corp., 755 F.2d 20, 25 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 474 U.S. 851 (1985)); see also Association Against Discrimination in Employment, Inc. v. City of Bridgeport, 647 F.2d 256, 274-75 (2d Cir. 1981) (consistent pattern of discriminatory hiring practices from 1971 to 1975 held to constitute a continuing violation), cert. denied, 455 U.S. 988 (1982). If a continuing violation is shown, a plaintiff is entitled to have a court consider all relevant actions allegedly taken pursuant to the employer's discriminatory policy or practice, including those that would otherwise be time barred. Van Zant v. KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, 80 F.3d 708, 713 (2d Cir. 1996); see, e.g., Lambert v. Genesee Hospital, 10 F.3d 46, 53 (2d Cir. 1993) (Under the continuing violation exception to the Title VII limitations period, if a Title VII plaintiff files an EEO[] charge that is timely as to any incident of discrimination in furtherance of an ongoing policy of discrimination, all claims of acts of discrimination under that policy will be timely even if they would be untimely standing alone.), cert. denied, 511 U.S. 1052 (1994). Although the continuing violation exception is usually associated with a discriminatory policy, rather than with individual instances of discrimination, and although acts so isolated in time... from each other... [or] from the timely allegations[] as to break the asserted continuum of discrimination will not suffice, Quinn v. Green Tree Credit Corp., 159 F.3d at 766, a continuing violation may be found where specific and related instances of discrimination are permitted by the employer to continue unremedied for so long as to amount to a discriminatory policy or practice. Cornwell v. Robinson, 23 F.3d 694, 704 (2d Cir. 1994). 68 If a claimant has failed to pursue a given claim in administrative proceedings, the federal court generally lacks jurisdiction to adjudicate that claim. See, e.g., Brown v. Coach Stores, Inc., 163 F.3d 706, 712 (2d Cir. 1998); Butts v. City of New York Department of Housing Preservation & Development, 990 F.2d 1397, 1401-02 (2d Cir. 1993). Even as to a claim not expressly pursued before the administrative agency, however, the court has jurisdiction if that claim is reasonably related to those that the plaintiff did assert before the agency. See, e.g., id. A claim is considered reasonably related if the conduct complained of would fall within the scope of the EEOC investigation which can reasonably be expected to grow out of the charge that was made, id. at 1402. Successive conduct that is part of a continuing wrong is by its very nature reasonably related to the earlier conduct. Cornwell v. Robinson, 23 F.3d at 706. However, a plaintiff may not rely on a continuing violation theory of timeliness unless she has asserted that theory in the administrative proceedings. See, e.g., Miller v. International Telephone & Telegraph Corp., 755 F.2d at 25.