Title VII generally requires an employee claiming discrimination to file a charge with the EEOC within 180 or 300 days (depending on the jurisdiction) of the occurrence of the allegedly discriminatory act.  This requirement was prominently at issue in the 2007 Lilly Ledbetter case, in which the Supreme Court ruled that an employee’s claim of pay discrimination was untimely because it was based on decisions allegedly made by her employer outside the 180-day period.  Congress effectively reversed this ruling in 2009, amending Title VII and other antidiscrimination statutes to provide that, in pay discrimination cases, the 180-day filing period “resets” with each new paycheck – even if the discriminatory pay decision occurred much earlier.  Now, the Supreme Court has unanimously held that a group of employees who failed to timely challenge an employer’s administration of an allegedly discriminatory test may still bring a timely claim based on the later application of the test’s scores to hiring decisions.

In Lewis v. City of Chicago, the City administered a written test to applicants for fire-fighter positions and selected candidates based on their scores.  In May 1996, candidates were selected randomly from the group of applicants who scored at least 89 out of 100 points.  Those scoring between 65 and 88 were deemed qualified and kept on an eligibility list, but were informed it was unlikely they would be selected.  In March 1997 an unselected African-American candidate filed an EEOC charge alleging that the test’s cut-off score negatively and unfairly impacted African-American candidates.

The Supreme Court ruled that the employee’s charge was timely filed within 180 days after the City applied the results of this test to a hiring decision.  The Court's decision turned in large part on the fact that the employee’s claim was not one of “disparate treatment,” which requires an employee to show that the employer engaged in intentional discrimination within the 180-day period.  Instead, the employee’s claim was that the cut-off score had a “disparate impact” on African-American candidates.  Because this claim did not require the showing of an intent to discriminate, but only a disparate impact within the 180-day period, the Court ruled that a claim based on the City’s later application of the test scores was timely filed.