You asked for a schedule change so you could make your medical appointments, and three weeks later your hours were cut. Or the interview was going well until you mentioned your service dog. Something happened at work, you believe your disability is the reason, and now you're staring at a federal agency's website wondering whether what happened to you counts. Filing with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is more manageable than it looks from the outside, and you don't need a lawyer to do it. What you do need is a firm grip on the deadline, because it's shorter than most people expect.

What a Charge Is, and What It Isn't

The EEOC calls it a "charge of discrimination" rather than a complaint, and the formal name scares people off before they start. A charge is a signed statement saying that an employer discriminated against you, and it asks the agency to investigate. A charge is not a lawsuit, and filing one doesn't mean you're suing anyone. It means you're creating an official record and setting an investigation in motion.

For disability discrimination, the charge does double duty. The Americans with Disabilities Act requires you to file with the EEOC before you can ever bring an employment lawsuit, so the charge preserves your right to sue later even if you hope it never comes to that. The ADA's employment protections cover private employers with 15 or more employees, along with employment agencies and labor unions. If you want the fuller picture of what those protections include, our guide to employment rights under the ADA walks through them.

Your Deadline: 180 Days, Sometimes 300

You have 180 calendar days from the day the discrimination happened to file your charge. Calendar days, not business days. Weekends and holidays count, though a deadline that lands on a weekend rolls to the next business day.

The window stretches to 300 days if a state or local agency enforces a law prohibiting disability discrimination in employment, which is true in most states. The problem is that figuring out which window applies to you takes research you may not have time for. Treat 180 days as your deadline and you can't get it wrong.

Two things about the clock trip people up. First, each discriminatory act carries its own deadline. If you were demoted in March and fired in August, the firing has its own 180 days even if the demotion's window has closed. Second, the clock does not pause while you work through your company's internal HR process. Waiting for an internal investigation to wrap up has cost people their filing window. Pursue both at once.

What to Gather Before You File

The charge itself asks for less than you might think:

• Your name, address, and phone number
• The employer's name, address, and approximate number of employees
• The dates of the events
• A short description of what happened and why you believe your disability was the reason

Names of the people involved and any witnesses strengthen the file, and so does a simple timeline of events. You don't need to prove your case at this stage. The description can be a few clear paragraphs. If you want to build a stronger record while events are fresh, there's a specific craft to documenting disability discrimination evidence, and starting it now serves you whether or not the charge goes anywhere.

One common starting point: many charges begin with a denied accommodation. If your employer turned down your request and skipped any real conversation about alternatives, that denial may itself be the discriminatory act. Our guide to what to do when an accommodation request is denied covers the steps between "they said no" and "I'm filing a charge."

Filing Through the Public Portal

The EEOC Public Portal at eeoc.gov is the main route, and it works in two stages. You start by submitting an online inquiry, which takes about ten minutes. Then you schedule an intake interview with EEOC staff, by phone or video or in person, where you talk through what happened. Only after that interview do you decide whether to convert the inquiry into a formal charge.

The interview is a conversation, not a test. The staff member's job is to understand your situation and help you frame the charge accurately. People go in braced for cross-examination and come out surprised at how practical it felt.

If the portal doesn't work for you, there are other doors. You can call 1-800-669-4000 to start the process by phone, visit a field office in person, or mail a signed letter containing the same basic information. Deaf and hard of hearing filers can use the ASL video phone line at 844-234-5122. The one thing you cannot do is file a charge by email.

What Happens After You File

Within 10 days of your filing, the EEOC notifies your employer that a charge exists. That notice tends to be the moment filers dread, so it helps to know that retaliation for filing is itself illegal, separately from the original discrimination. If your employer responds to the charge by punishing you, that becomes a second violation, and recognizing workplace retaliation early lets you add it to your file.

From there, the case usually follows one of a few paths. The EEOC may offer mediation, which is free, voluntary, and confidential, and settles a meaningful share of charges within a few months. If mediation doesn't happen or doesn't resolve things, an investigator collects documents and interviews from both sides. Investigations commonly run around 10 months, and long silences are normal rather than a sign your case was forgotten.

The investigation ends in one of two findings. If the EEOC finds reasonable cause to believe discrimination occurred, it attempts to settle with the employer, and in a small number of cases it sues on your behalf. If it can't establish a violation, it closes the case and sends you a Notice of Right to Sue. That notice is not a judgment that you're wrong. It's the key that unlocks the courthouse: from the day you receive it, you have 90 days to file your own lawsuit. You can also request the notice yourself once your charge has been on file for 180 days, if you'd rather move to court without waiting for the investigation to finish.

If You Work for the Federal Government

Federal employees follow a different track with a much tighter deadline. Instead of filing a charge with the EEOC directly, you must contact an EEO counselor at your own agency within 45 days of the discriminatory act. Every federal agency has an EEO office, and the counselor starts either counseling or mediation before any formal complaint is filed. If the 45 days are close, make that contact first and sort out the details after.

The portal will still be there tonight after everyone else is asleep. Count the days since the act you'd be reporting, put the deadline on your calendar, and submit the inquiry. Ten minutes of typing turns what happened to you into a dated, official record with a federal agency behind it.