Certain employment claims require an employee to exhaust their administrative remedies prior to bringing an action in court or arbitration. Failure to exhaust these administrative remedies may result in the dismissal of the employee’s claims. In Kuigoua v. Department of Veteran Affairs, No. B323735, 2024 WL 1651329 (Cal. Ct. App. Apr. 17, 2024), the California Court of Appeal found that the plaintiff failed to exhaust his administrative remedies under the Fair Employment Housing Act (FEHA) prior to bringing a suit where his court claims were focused on racial and national origin discrimination, unlike the administrative charge, which focused on sex discrimination against men. In upholding the defendant company’s motion for summary judgment based on failure to exhaust administrative remedies, the court reiterated the test for administrative exhaustion: “employees satisfy the administrative exhaustion requirement if their court claims are like, and reasonably related to, the claims they stated in their administrative filing.” The court reasoned that anything short of this test frustrates the statutory goals underlying the requirement, including making it more difficult to remedy unlawful practice, mitigating damages, and encouraging settlement.
The bottom line is that a savvy employment attorney should make sure to complete the administrative charge thoroughly and accurately, as failure to do so may devastate a case.
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