By a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court ruled today that Title VII complainants must show an actual act of discrimination against them in the 180 days prior to their EEOC charge. This seems obvious, but the question was whether otherwise time-barred acts of discrimination, which did not take effect until the 180-day charge period, could give rise to a valid Title VII claim. The facts do not seem to address the issue of “delayed discovery” of an older adverse employment decision; the plaintiff knew that she had got a bad review and delayed filing her EEOC charge until the results of that review took effect. It was a close vote but it seems like the correct statutory (if not necessarily optimal policy) result.
