Statute of Limitations for California Employment Claims

What Starts the Clock?

Accrual generally runs from the date of the unlawful act, not from the date you discovered it was unlawful, and not from the date you decided to do something about it. For termination cases the trigger is usually your last day of employment. For a demotion, a denied promotion, or a single act of retaliation, the trigger is that act.

Discrete acts each carry their own clock. If you were passed over in March, demoted in September, and fired the following June, you have three trigger dates, and the March claim can expire while the June claim is still comfortably alive.

Wage claims work differently. Each underpaid paycheck is its own violation with its own clock, so a long run of unpaid overtime is not one expired claim but a rolling series where the older weeks drop off the back as time passes. That is why filing sooner recovers more money, even when nothing is technically expired yet.

Harassment claims can reach back further. Under the continuing violation doctrine, a pattern of related harassment that continues into the limitations period can pull in earlier acts that would otherwise be time barred. It applies to ongoing courses of conduct, not to discrete decisions.

Which Deadline Applies When Claims Overlap?

All of them, separately. One termination can produce a FEHA discrimination claim at 3 years to the CRD, a Labor Code 1102.5 whistleblower claim at 3 years straight to court with no agency filing required, a defamation claim at 1 year if the employer told others a false and damaging reason for the firing, and a waiting time penalty claim at 3 years for a final paycheck that came late.

The shortest live claim sets your real deadline, because the value of the case usually depends on keeping the whole set together rather than salvaging whichever piece survived. In the example above that is the 1 year defamation clock, which is also the one employees are least likely to know they have.

This is the practical argument for an early case review even when you are not sure you want to sue. Identifying which clocks are running takes one conversation. Reconstructing a claim after one has expired takes a different and much worse conversation. See wrongful termination for how these claims typically stack.

Frequently Asked Questions About Deadlines

Does Filing With the CRD Stop the Other Clocks?

No. A CRD complaint tolls the FEHA claims it covers. Your non-FEHA claims, including whistleblower retaliation, wage claims, and defamation, keep running the entire time the agency has your file.

I already signed a severance agreement. Do deadlines still apply?

Yes, to whatever the release did not validly waive. Some claims cannot be waived at all, and some releases fail for other reasons. Deadlines apply to everything that survives, which means a signed agreement is a reason to get it reviewed quickly rather than a reason to assume it is over. See severance agreement review.

What If My Employer Strung Me Along With Promises to Fix It?

There are equitable estoppel arguments where an employer’s own conduct caused the delay, and they are difficult, fact specific, and decided case by case. Treat it as a live question for an attorney rather than an answer you can rely on.

My deadline may have already passed. Is it worth calling?

Yes. Which clock actually applies is a legal question, not an obvious one, and people routinely misidentify their own trigger date or miss a longer parallel claim entirely. A short conversation resolves it either way.