Bay Area Workplace Discrimination and Harassment Statistics

The nine Bay Area counties recorded 3,799 complaints of all kinds in 2024. Alameda County led with 1,531, the second highest total of any county in the state, and the highest employment filing rate among large counties at 168.2 per 100,000 workers. Santa Clara County, with the region's largest labor force of 1,027,339, recorded 692 complaints, and San Francisco 579.

The complaint counts, 2022 to 2024

The Alameda figure jumped from 727 in 2023 to 1,531 in 2024, driven by right to sue complaints going from 375 to 1,083. The region's rates are the highest in the state for reasons that have little to do with employer behavior: dense public sector employment, high union density, tech industry severance disputes, and more employment lawyers per worker than anywhere else in California. San Francisco at 100.7 and Santa Clara at 59.5 per 100,000 both sit near or above the statewide rate.

How to read the county tables. CRD records the county where each complaint arose, and its Appendix C counts complaints of every kind by county: employment complaints accepted for investigation, employment complaints filed for a right to sue, housing complaints, and smaller categories under the Unruh Act, the Ralph Act and other statutes, which are in the total but not shown separately here. The county tables cover complaints with a county recorded, which is fewer than the statewide totals, so the sum of the counties is lower than the statewide figures on our CRD by year page. Rates divide the 2024 employment filings (investigated plus right to sue) by the county labor force.

What the statewide tables add

CRD does not publish complaint bases by county, so the mix of claims in the Bay Area has to be read from the statewide basis tables. Across California in 2024, disability was the most cited basis in right to sue complaints (14,430), followed by retaliation for reporting or resisting discrimination (11,837), sex or gender (9,131), family leave (8,340), requests for disability accommodation (8,288) and race (7,655). A sexually hostile work environment was alleged in 6,787 complaints. There is no reason to think the Bay Area departs much from that mix.

The federal side adds a statewide figure only: 4,750 EEOC charges from California in fiscal 2025, 62 percent of them alleging retaliation. The EEOC does not publish county counts.

What these numbers mean if it happened to you

• The same state law applies in every county: three years to file with CRD, one year to sue after the notice, uncapped damages, employers of five or more covered for discrimination and all employers for harassment.
• Where you file in court is usually the county where you worked or where the employer does business, and local juries and local judges shape case values.
• A right to sue complaint from the Bay Area goes into the same statewide queue. Requesting it online takes minutes, but get advice before you start the one year clock.
• Employment filings per 100,000 workers are a rough measure of how often people in an area take action, not of how often they are wronged.

Sources

The figures on this page were taken from the following publications, as released by the agencies. Percentages, changes, sums and rates per 100,000 workers are our own arithmetic from those figures.

• California Civil Rights Department, 2024 Annual Report (complaint tables and county appendix), calcivilrights.ca.gov
• California Civil Rights Department, 2023 Annual Report, calcivilrights.ca.gov
• California Civil Rights Department, 2022 Annual Report, calcivilrights.ca.gov
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Local Area Unemployment Statistics, California and county labor force, latest month available in September 2026, www.bls.gov

Frequently asked questions