Filing a Workplace Harassment Complaint in North Carolina

Not a harassment complaint. The Department administers the Retaliatory Employment Discrimination Act, which is a genuine process with a genuine clock: N.C.G.S. 95-242(a) requires a written complaint to the Commissioner of Labor within 180 days of the alleged violation, and N.C.G.S. 95-243(b) then requires suit within 90 days of the date the right to sue letter was issued. The catch is N.C.G.S. 95-241(a), which lists the protected activities exhaustively: workers' compensation, occupational safety and health, wage and hour, mine safety, sickle cell and genetic testing, National Guard service, pesticide records, opioid treatment, juvenile court participation and domestic violence protective orders. Complaining about harassment is not among them.

Yes. N.C.G.S. 7A-759(a) designates the Office of Administrative Hearings as the state's deferral agency for cases deferred by the EEOC for charges filed by State or local government employees covered under Chapter 126 of the General Statutes, the State Human Resources Act, and subsection (b1) repeats that limit. A deferred charge is heard as a contested case, and N.C.G.S. 7A-759(d) and (e) provide that an administrative law judge's order after a contested case hearing is a final agency decision binding on the parties. The deadlines that apply to a Chapter 126 employee sit in that chapter, so confirm them with a North Carolina employment lawyer rather than using the private sector answer.

No, and North Carolina provides nothing beneath the federal floor. N.C.G.S. 143-422.2(a) mentions employers which regularly employ 15 or more employees, the same number Title VII uses, and it does so inside a sentence declaring the public policy of the State rather than inside a prohibition, so it creates no independent right. A worker at a six person North Carolina company therefore has no federal Title VII harassment claim and no state statutory claim either. That is the opposite of states such as Michigan or New York, where the state statute reaches the smallest employers.

It declares a policy and stops. N.C.G.S. 143-422.2(a) states that it is the public policy of this State to protect and safeguard the right and opportunity of all persons to seek, obtain and hold employment without discrimination or abridgement on account of race, religion, color, national origin, age, sex or handicap by employers which regularly employ 15 or more employees. There is no operative prohibition, no procedure and no penalty attached to it. The class list has not been amended since 1977, and it still uses the older term handicap rather than disability.

Not through the state statute. The seven categories named in N.C.G.S. 143-422.2(a) are race, religion, color, national origin, age, sex and handicap, with no sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, military status or genetic information. Federal law is the answer for a North Carolina worker in those categories: the Supreme Court held in Bostock v. Clayton County that Title VII's prohibition on discrimination because of sex covers sexual orientation and gender identity. That protection is enforced through an EEOC charge rather than through anything in Raleigh.

Possibly, and it is worth twenty minutes of checking. Section 3 of S.L. 2017-4 barred any local government in the state from enacting or amending an ordinance regulating private employment practices, and Section 4 of the same act provided that Section 3 expired on December 1, 2020. Since then North Carolina municipalities have been free to legislate in this area again. Which cities and counties have done so, and whether any of them created a local body that accepts employment complaints, varies, so check the ordinances for the place where you actually work rather than assuming either way.