Sexual Harassment Statistics for California, 2026

Sexual harassment is the one workplace claim where the official count and the real count are furthest apart. The tables below are the official count for California. They are large, they are rising, and they are still a fraction of what happens.

This page uses two sets of records. The California Civil Rights Department (CRD) publishes its complaints by basis each year, which is where California specific sexual harassment figures come from. The federal EEOC publishes national sexual harassment tables through fiscal 2025, which we use as the baseline. The two agencies count different things and we keep them separate.

California sexual harassment complaints, 2022 to 2024

CRD splits sexual harassment into two bases. A hostile environment claim says the conduct was severe or pervasive enough to change the conditions of work. A quid pro quo claim says a job benefit was tied to sexual demands. The table shows both, for complaints CRD accepted for a full investigation and for complaints filed only to get an immediate right to sue notice, which is the route most people take when they already have a lawyer.

Three things stand out. First, hostile environment right to sue complaints climbed 36 percent in two years. Second, right to sue complaints outnumber investigated complaints by roughly 15 to one on the hostile environment line, which tells you most sexual harassment claimants in California go straight toward court. Third, hostile environment claims are 2.5 times as common as quid pro quo claims among right to sue complaints, and 12 times as common among investigated complaints.

A note on how to read the CRD figures. The Civil Rights Department publishes its numbers by calendar year, and it counts a complaint under every basis it lists, so the basis rows add up to more than the number of complaints. Most California workers who go to court first ask CRD for an immediate right to sue notice rather than an investigation, so the right to sue table is the closer measure of how many people are actually pursuing a claim.

Sexual harassment as a share of all California employment complaints

In 2024 CRD accepted 4,077 employment complaints for investigation and issued 16,924 right to sue notices. A sexually hostile work environment was alleged in 11.0 percent of the investigated complaints and in 40.1 percent of the right to sue complaints. Right to sue complaints are usually drafted by lawyers who list every basis the facts support, which is why the share is so much higher on that side.

Sex or gender discrimination, which is a different basis, was cited 9,131 times in the 2024 right to sue filings. Many complaints list both, because harassment and discrimination usually arrive together.

The national picture from the EEOC

The EEOC tracks sexual harassment charges under Title VII separately from broader sex based harassment. Both series are national only, the agency does not publish state level harassment counts, which is why the California figures above come from CRD.

Sexual harassment charges nationwide bottomed out at 5,581 in fiscal 2021 and have climbed 52 percent since, to 8,475 in fiscal 2025. Harassment of any kind now accounts for 42.4 percent of all EEOC charges. The EEOC obtained 86.12 million dollars for sexual harassment charging parties in fiscal 2025 through its own process, not counting lawsuits.

What the counts leave out

The EEOC task force that studied harassment put the gap in one sentence: about 90 percent of people who say they experienced harassment never take a formal step such as filing a charge. It also found that depending on how the question is asked, anywhere from 25 to 85 percent of women report having been sexually harassed at work. A separate 2018 national survey found 81 percent of women and 43 percent of men had experienced some form of sexual harassment or assault in their lifetime, in any setting.

Apply the task force ratio to California and the 6,787 hostile environment right to sue complaints in 2024 would represent something closer to 67,870 people who felt harassed that year. We do not present that as a measurement, only as the scale of the gap the official numbers sit inside.

What these numbers mean if it happened to you

California law is broader than federal law on every point that matters for a sexual harassment claim. The Fair Employment and Housing Act covers every employer with one or more employees for harassment, it makes employers strictly liable for harassment by a supervisor, and it lets you name the harasser personally. Since 2019 a single severe incident can be enough for a hostile environment claim, and the law tells courts that these cases are rarely suitable for dismissal before trial.

• You do not have to complain to HR first to keep your rights, though a written complaint creates the paper trail that wins cases.
• Retaliation for reporting harassment is a separate claim. In 2024 more Californians cited retaliation for reporting or resisting discrimination (11,837 right to sue complaints) than cited a sexually hostile environment.
• Emotional distress damages have no cap under California law, and a jury can add punitive damages against a company that knew and did nothing.
• The state deadline is three years from the last incident. The federal deadline is 300 days.

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
• EEOC, Table E2a, charges alleging harassment, FY 2010 to FY 2025, www.eeoc.gov
• EEOC, Table E2b, Title VII sex based harassment charge receipts, FY 2010 to FY 2025, www.eeoc.gov
• EEOC, Table E2c, Title VII sexual harassment charge receipts and resolutions, FY 2010 to FY 2025, www.eeoc.gov
• EEOC, Table E1a, charge receipts by basis or statute, FY 1997 to FY 2025, www.eeoc.gov
• EEOC, Select Task Force on the Study of Harassment in the Workplace, 2016 report, www.eeoc.gov
• Stop Street Harassment, 2018 national study on sexual harassment and assault, stopstreetharassment.org

Frequently asked questions