Opinion ID: 2994304
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Failure to charge harassment.

Text: Vela argues that her charge was sufficient because she checked sex as the basis of the discrimination against her, and sexual harassment is a type of discrimination because of sex. But our caselaw makes it clear that the charge must be more specific. As a general rule, a Title VII plaintiff cannot bring claims in a lawsuit that are not included in her EEOC charge. . . . For allowing a complaint to encompass allegations outside the ambit of the predicate EEOC charge would frustrate the EEOC’s investigatory and conciliatory role, as well as deprive the charged party of notice of the charge. Cheek v. Western and Southern Life Ins. Co., 31 F.3d 497, 500 (7th Cir. 1994). Because an employer may discriminate on the basis of sex in numerous ways, a claim of sex discrimination in an EEOC charge and a claim of sex discrimination in a complaint are not alike or reasonably related just because they both assert forms of sex discrimination. Id. at 501. We acknowledge that a claim in a civil action need not be a replica of a claim described in the charge, but there must be a reasonable relationship between the allegations in the charge and the claims in the complaint, and it must appear that the claim in the complaint can reasonably be expected to grow out of an EEOC investigation of the allegations in the charge. Id. at 500. In the case before us, Vela’s claim of sexual harassment, stated in her complaint, is wholly diverse from the claim of disparate treatment described in her EEOC charge. It is not reasonably related, and the charge is therefore not an adequate predicate for it. See Sauzek v. Exxon Coal USA, Inc., 202 F.3d 913, 920 (7th Cir. 2000) (employer’s decision to terminate worker not reasonably related to subsequent decision not to rehire worker during a recall); Novitsky v. American Consulting Engineers, L.L.C., 196 F.3d 699, 701-02 (7th Cir. 1999) (claim of failure to accommodate plaintiff’s religion not reasonably related to EEOC charge discussing discrimination on bases of age and religion, even where plaintiff described in intake form an incident that supported her failure to accommodate theory); cf. Jenkins v. Blue Cross Mut. Hosp. Ins., Inc., 538 F.2d 164, 167-69 (7th Cir. 1976) (en banc) (plaintiff sufficiently alleged facts supporting claim of sex discrimination in EEOC charge to proceed with sex discrimination claim in court, despite plaintiff’s failure to check the box for sex discrimination on the charge). There are cases where courts have looked beyond the four corners of the EEOC charge form. Allegations outside the body of the charge may be considered when it is clear that the charging party intended the agency to investigate the allegations. See Cheek, 31 F.3d at 502, citing Rush v. McDonald’s Corp., 966 F.2d 1104, 1110-11 (7th Cir. 1992) (plaintiff’s handwritten EEOC Affidavit submitted the same day as her EEOC charge) and Box v. A & P Tea Co., 772 F.2d 1372, 1375 (7th Cir. 1985) (handwritten additions to typed charge). A later case is Sickinger v. Mega Systems, Inc., 951 F.Supp. 153, 157-58 (N.D. Ind. 1998) (Charge Questionnaire, filled out the same day as the charge was filed, under particular circumstances where the employer could not claim surprise at the claim stated fully in the questionnaire, but not in the charge). In all three examples, the outside allegations were in writing. In the case before us the only document external to the charge is the intake form, and the indication thereon that she claimed harassment was not only crossed out, but the cross-out was initialed by her. Vela argues that she orally informed the intake officer of the facts of her claim of sexual harassment, and that in directing her to cross out the reference to harassment on her intake form and by omitting the claim of harassment when he typed the charge, he misled her. We hold, however, that an oral charge, if made as she testified, not reflected in nor reasonably related to the charge actually filed, is not a sufficient predicate for a claim of sexual harassment in her civil action. 42 U.S.C. sec. 2000e-5(b) requires that, Charges shall be in writing under oath or affirmation and 29 C.F.R. sec. 1601.9 makes the same requirement. No case suggests that an oral statement to an agency representative is adequate, and notice of such a statement cannot be expected to reach the employer./2 See Novitsky, 196 F.3d at 702 (court rejects plaintiff’s reliance on information written on intake form but not included in charge, where plaintiff had opportunity to read charge and obtain professional advice regarding it, and signed charge).