California Sexual Harassment Lawyer

A supervisor ties your next assignment to a sexual favor. A coworker fills the team chat with sexual comments. A customer keeps touching you, and management tells you to tolerate it. Three situations, three different legal questions: what the conduct was, what authority the person had, and what your employer did once it knew. California answers all three through one statute, Government Code section 12940(j), and a set of rules around it that are stronger than federal law in almost every respect.¹

Eghbali Law Firm represents employees only. This page lays out the California rules that decide a sexual harassment claim: what counts, who is covered, when the company is responsible, the deadlines, how the Civil Rights Department process works, whether an arbitration clause can keep you out of court, what a settlement may keep secret, and what a claim is worth. At the end are three checks you can run yourself in two minutes: your filing dates, which legal issues your facts raise, and what your arbitration or confidentiality terms actually do.

One habit matters more than any other while you read: keep the dates of each incident, every agency notice, and every agreement you signed together in one place. They answer different questions, and a deadline printed on an agency notice keeps running while your employer "investigates."

What counts as sexual harassment under California law

The Fair Employment and Housing Act, FEHA, prohibits harassment because of sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, and pregnancy, among other protected characteristics. Sexual desire is not required. Sex-based insults, degrading treatment of women or of men, and harassment aimed at someone's gender identity or orientation all qualify, whether or not anyone wanted anything from the target.¹

The standard for a hostile work environment is conduct that is severe or pervasive. Those are alternatives, not a two-part test. One serious incident can be enough; a string of smaller incidents can add up to the same thing. In 2019 the Legislature wrote that directly into the statute. Government Code section 12923(b) says a single incident of harassing conduct is sufficient to create a triable issue when it unreasonably interfered with the employee's work or created an intimidating, hostile, or offensive environment, and it expressly rejects the federal decision in Brooks v. City of San Mateo, which had treated one episode of groping as not enough.⁴

Two more lines in section 12923 change how a case is argued. Subdivision (a) says you do not have to prove that your productivity fell; it is enough that the conduct made it harder to do the job or undermined your sense of well-being at work. Subdivision (c) rejects the "stray remarks" doctrine: a discriminatory comment is not thrown out just because the speaker was not the decision maker or said it outside a formal decision. The whole record counts.⁵ So when you write your account, describe the changes in how you worked, the assignments you started avoiding, the detours through the office, the meetings you would not attend alone, and record who said what, who heard it, and how the speaker was connected to the people who controlled your work.

Quid pro quo and hostile work environment

When a work benefit depends on sexual cooperation

Quid pro quo harassment is a trade: hiring, a promotion, a better schedule, a desirable account, or simply keeping the job, conditioned on submitting to sexual conduct. The regulations under FEHA describe it plainly as unwanted sexual advances that condition an employment benefit on an exchange of sexual favors.⁶ Nobody has to spell out the bargain in writing. A manager who says a major account "stays yours if we can finally have that weekend" has made the connection, and the message, the assignment history, and whatever reason is later given for taking the account away are the evidence.

When the conduct changes the working environment

A hostile environment needs no proposed exchange and no lost job benefit. Sexual comments, images, touching, threats, or sex-based humiliation that meet the severe or pervasive standard are enough.⁶ The format does not matter: an explicit text from a supervisor, sexual images in Slack, repeated remarks about your body on Zoom calls and in email are all workplace conduct, and the Civil Rights Department's own harassment prevention guide treats electronic communication as part of the workplace.³ Save whole threads with dates and participants, not a single screenshot, and save any meeting recordings or transcripts you are allowed to keep.

Harassment by a customer, client, vendor, or patient raises a different question: what management knew and what it did. Under section 12940(j)(1) an employer is responsible for harassment by a nonemployee when it knew or should have known about it and failed to take immediate and appropriate corrective action.¹ Write down when you reported it, to whom, what you asked for, and whether the customer kept interacting with you afterward.

Same-sex harassment is covered. An owner has no exemption; the owner's role matters only for deciding how the company is liable, and the person who harasses can be liable individually under section 12940(j)(3) whatever their title.² For your account, identify who actually controlled hiring, schedules, assignments, discipline, and complaints. Titles often hide how decisions were really made.

Who California's harassment law covers

For harassment, an "employer" is any person or company regularly employing one or more people, and the protection extends to applicants, unpaid interns, volunteers, and people providing services under a contract (section 12940(j)(1), (j)(4), (j)(5)). The five-employee threshold that applies to most other FEHA claims does not apply here.² That matters when a small business says it is too small to be covered, or when a company answers your complaint by calling you a contractor. Keep the agreement and a plain description of how the work actually ran; the label on an invoice does not settle coverage.

The individual harasser can be personally liable under section 12940(j)(3), separately from the employer.¹ Your account should name the person and every organization involved, including a staffing agency or a business operating under a different public name, and should separate what you saw yourself from what others told you.

Outside a workplace, Civil Code section 51.9 reaches sexual harassment in business, service, and professional relationships: landlords, teachers, physicians, lawyers, and, since SB 224 took effect in 2019, investors, elected officials, lobbyists, directors, and producers. A relationship you were trying to form counts too. It is a separate claim with its own elements, so a person seeking work through a professional gatekeeper should keep the communications that establish the relationship.⁷

When your employer is responsible

For harassment by a supervisor, California holds the employer strictly liable: it does not matter whether the company knew or had a good policy. For harassment by a coworker or a third party, the employer is liable when it knew or should have known and failed to act (section 12940(j)(1)).⁸ That distinction makes the harasser's real authority a central fact. A "lead," a "team captain," or a "coordinator" who assigns work, approves time, and writes evaluations may be a supervisor under section 12926(t) regardless of the title.

Separately, section 12940(k) requires every employer to take all reasonable steps to prevent harassment, and the regulations spell out what that means: a written policy with a complaint process that does not require reporting to the harasser, a fair and timely investigation, and corrective action that fits what was found.³ The policy you were handed becomes evidence the moment it is compared with what happened to your complaint. Keep it, keep the reporting channels it names, and keep every message that redirected, delayed, or ignored your report.

Training is mandatory. Under section 12950.1, employers with five or more employees must give supervisors two hours and everyone else one hour of harassment prevention training, within six months of hire or promotion and every two years after that.⁹ Missing training does not prove your case, and completed training does not excuse the way your complaint was handled.

Deadlines: identify the claim before you count the days

Three years to file with the Civil Rights Department

An employment harassment complaint must reach the CRD within three years of the last act of harassment (section 12960(e), as amended by AB 9 in 2020). CRD's instructions say to submit the intake form within three years of the date you were last harmed.¹⁰ A complaint to HR, a saved draft, or an employer investigation is not a CRD filing. Keep the submission receipt.

One year to sue after the right-to-sue notice

Once CRD issues a right-to-sue notice, you have one year from the date on the notice to file the FEHA lawsuit (section 12965).¹¹ The clock runs from the notice date, not from the day you read it. Asking for an immediate right-to-sue notice moves the case toward court and ends CRD's investigation of that complaint; the agency says so on the form.

Tolling and continuing conduct

Section 12960 itself extends the filing period in listed situations, for example when you did not and could not reasonably have known that the conduct was unlawful. Courts also apply equitable tolling while you pursue a formal alternative proceeding such as a grievance or a different agency complaint (McDonald v. Antelope Valley Community College District, 2008), but not for informal negotiations with the employer (Acuna v. San Diego Gas & Electric, 2013).¹² A continuing course of harassment can make earlier incidents timely when they are part of the same pattern, but a later incident does not automatically revive every earlier act or a separate termination claim. The complete chronology decides it, which is why the dates matter so much.

Public employers: two calendars

If you work for the state, a county, a city, a school district, or any other public entity, your FEHA claim is exempt from the Government Claims Act. You do not file a six-month government claim for it; you follow the CRD route under sections 12960 and 12965, as Snipes v. City of Bakersfield and Garcia v. Los Angeles Unified School District held.¹³ Any separate tort claim against the same public employer, battery for example, does require a government claim within six months of the injury (Government Code section 911.2), unless an exception applies.¹⁴ One incident can run on two calendars.

Sexual assault has its own limitations rules

For sexual assault suffered as an adult, Code of Civil Procedure section 340.16 gives the later of ten years from the last act or three years from discovering an injury caused by it. AB 2777 (2022) revived otherwise expired claims for assaults on or after January 1, 2009, with a filing window that closes December 31, 2026. AB 250 (2025) opened a further window, January 1, 2026 through December 31, 2027, for qualifying claims; public entities are excluded from that one.¹⁵ None of these windows replaces the FEHA deadlines for the harassment claim itself.

The CRD process, from intake to court

1. Prepare the account. Employer, people involved, dates, witnesses, documents, in plain language. Keep the harassment and any punishment that followed your report as separate events; they are separate claims under sections 12940(j) and 12940(h).
2. Submit the intake form. CRD reviews whether the allegations fall under a law it enforces. If it accepts the matter, it prepares a formal complaint for your signature and serves the employer. Acceptance is not a finding.¹⁰
3. Choose investigation or an immediate right-to-sue notice. The immediate notice lets you file a FEHA lawsuit without waiting; CRD will not investigate that complaint afterward, and it does not file anything with the EEOC for you.¹¹
4. Consider mediation. CRD's dispute resolution division offers free mediation of pending complaints. Prepare the facts, the money, the workplace changes you want, and the settlement terms you would accept as four separate lists.¹⁶
5. File the civil action. A FEHA lawsuit requires the right-to-sue notice first. Filing starts a different process: service, the employer's response, discovery, motions, settlement talks, and if needed trial. Keep the agency file intact so the court complaint can be checked against it.

Before an intake interview, write a chronology that separates what you saw from what you were told. For each event: approximate date, location or platform, who spoke, who heard, which document goes with it, and what response you got when you raised it. Mark uncertain dates as approximate. The interview goes better when you are reading from a page instead of reconstructing from memory.

Does an arbitration agreement keep you out of court?

Usually not anymore. The Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act (Public Law 117-90, signed March 3, 2022, and still carrying the title "Act of 2021") added sections 401 and 402 to title 9 of the United States Code. For a case involving a sexual harassment or sexual assault dispute, the person alleging the conduct can elect to void a predispute arbitration agreement and any predispute waiver of class or joint actions.¹⁷

The date you signed does not decide it. Section 3 of the Act applies it to any dispute or claim that arises or accrues on or after March 3, 2022, so an arbitration clause signed years earlier can still be set aside for conduct after that date. Whether the Act covers a dispute is decided by a court, not an arbitrator, even if the contract says otherwise (9 U.S.C. section 402(b)).¹⁷ The Act concerns agreements signed before a dispute exists; you remain free to choose arbitration after one arises if that suits you.

What a settlement may keep secret, and what it may not

Separate the money from the facts. Code of Civil Procedure section 1001, expanded by SB 331 in 2022, bars any settlement of a claim filed in court or with an agency from preventing disclosure of the facts of workplace harassment, discrimination, or retaliation. The amount paid can stay confidential, and at the claimant's own request the agreement can shield the claimant's identity, unless a government agency or public official is a party.¹⁸

Government Code section 12964.5 covers the agreements that are not settlements of filed claims: employment agreements and separation agreements. They cannot stop you from discussing conduct you reasonably believe is unlawful. A nondisparagement clause must carve that out in substance, and a separation agreement must tell you that you have the right to consult a lawyer and give you at least five business days to do it. Legitimate trade secrets, proprietary information, and the settlement amount can still be protected.¹⁸ Section 12964.5(d) exempts a negotiated settlement of a claim you already raised in court, with an agency, in arbitration, or through the employer's internal complaint process, provided the settlement was voluntary, informed, supported by consideration, and you had notice and an opportunity to retain a lawyer. A clause that violates these rules is unenforceable; it does not by itself undo a release you signed for valid consideration, which is why the release, the confidentiality term, and any arbitration clause each need their own reading.

Retaliation after you report, or help someone else

Section 12940(h) makes it unlawful to discharge, demote, or otherwise discriminate against anyone for opposing harassment, filing a complaint, testifying, or assisting in a proceeding. Retaliation is not only firing: lost hours, a worse schedule, a denied promotion, discipline that never came before, and exclusion from the work that led to raises all count when the complaint caused them.¹⁹

Build a before-and-after record. Keep earlier schedules and evaluations, note when each decision maker learned of your complaint, and save the explanation given for every change afterward. Timing supports the claim; the stated reasons, and how they compare with the treatment of coworkers who did not complain, usually decide it.

What a claim is worth

FEHA remedies include back pay, future lost earnings, emotional distress damages, out-of-pocket costs, and orders changing how the workplace operates (section 12965).² Build the financial side from records: missed shifts, lost commissions and bonuses, lost benefits, what you earned afterward, and expenses caused by the events. The emotional side deserves the same care: describe what changed in your sleep, concentration, relationships, and ability to walk into the building, and keep any treatment records private but available.

Punitive damages require more than proving harassment. Civil Code section 3294 demands clear and convincing evidence of oppression, fraud, or malice, and against a company the conduct must have been committed, authorized, or ratified by an officer, director, or managing agent. Punitive damages are not available against public entities (Government Code section 818).

Fees run one way. Under section 12965(c)(6) the court may award the prevailing employee reasonable attorney's fees and costs, including expert fees, while a prevailing employer recovers fees only if the case was frivolous, unreasonable, or groundless when brought or continued.²⁰ That rule is why a contingency case can be taken on facts a defendant would rather not see in court.

California complaint numbers, and the national context

CRD's 2024 annual report counts 449 hostile environment and 38 quid pro quo sexual harassment bases among the employment complaints it investigated, and 6,787 and 2,730 respectively among complaints filed with an immediate right-to-sue request. A complaint can carry several bases, so these are allegations counted by category, not people and not findings.²¹ Nationally, the EEOC received 27,291 sexual harassment charges in fiscal years 2018 through 2021, and 43.5 percent of them were filed together with a retaliation charge.²² Year-by-year California figures are on our sexual harassment statistics page.

Questions people ask first

When you are ready to talk to someone, here is how to choose a sexual harassment lawyer. Where the conduct crossed into assault, our workplace sexual assault page explains the criminal and civil tracks. If you work in Los Angeles County, the Los Angeles sexual harassment lawyer page covers the local agencies, the court, and local workplaces. The firm's record is on the results page.

Related reading: what a right-to-sue letter is and what it starts, whether you can record your boss in California, and what an employment lawyer costs. Look up the employer in our wage theft tracker and layoff notice tracker. Local pages: Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego, and the Los Angeles County guide. Articles: sexual harassment in California workplaces, the types of sexual harassment, inappropriate comments and innuendo, inappropriate touching, other forms of sexual harassment, what to do when a coworker harasses you, whether complaining gets you fired, confidentiality in a harassment case, when to talk to a lawyer, sexual assault at work.