Pennsylvania Human Relations Act: Filing, Deadlines, and Remedies

The Pennsylvania Human Relations Act is the Commonwealth’s main civil rights statute, banning discrimination in employment, housing, public accommodations, and education, and it has been enforced by the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission (PHRC) since 1955.¹ It reaches smaller employers than federal law does, protects more characteristics than the federal statutes list by name, and places no cap on compensatory damages if your case ends up in court. The deadline to know before anything else: you have 180 days from the discriminatory act to file a complaint with the PHRC.²

Who the Law Protects

Section 5 of the Act lists the personal characteristics an employer cannot use against you: race, color, religious creed, ancestry, age, sex, national origin, or non-job-related disability. It also protects people who use a guide or support animal because of blindness, deafness, or physical disability. Age protection kicks in at 40, the same threshold as the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act.²

In housing and commercial property transactions, familial status is added to the list. That covers households with children under 18 living with a parent or legal guardian, people who are pregnant, and anyone in the process of securing custody of a child.²

Sex, Sexual Orientation, and Gender Identity

The Act does not define “sex” in its text, and the PHRC has resolved that gap through official guidance. Under the Commission’s reading, “sex” includes sex assigned at birth, sexual orientation, transgender identity, gender transition, gender identity, and gender expression. The reasoning follows Bostock v. Clayton County, the 2020 U.S. Supreme Court decision holding that firing someone for being gay or transgender is inherently sex-based discrimination.³ The PHRC accepts and investigates complaints on any of those grounds in every area the Act covers.

Hair Texture and Protective Hairstyles

Governor Shapiro signed HB 439 into law on November 25, 2025, amending the Act so that “race” expressly includes traits historically associated with race, such as hair texture and protective hairstyles like braids, locs, and twists.⁴ Known as the CROWN Act, the amendment still allows workplace health and safety rules that affect hairstyles, but only if the employer can show the policy is nondiscriminatory, narrowly tailored to the specific job, and applied equally.²

Who Has to Follow It

Any employer with four or more employees in Pennsylvania is covered, including state and local government agencies, school districts, and political subdivisions. The Act also protects independent contractors alongside traditional employees, so a company cannot avoid the law by relabeling workers.² Coverage runs across the full working relationship: hiring, pay, promotions, conditions of employment, and termination.

Four employees is a much lower bar than the 15-employee minimum for federal Title VII claims. Many small Pennsylvania businesses are answerable under state law even when they are too small for federal employment discrimination law to reach them.

Religious, fraternal, charitable, and sectarian organizations are generally excluded from the definition of “employer,” but that exclusion has a significant carve-out. When a claim is based on race, color, age, sex, national origin, or disability, those organizations are covered if they employ four or more people. They keep the right to hire based on sex when it is a genuine occupational requirement rooted in religious beliefs, and in housing, religious and fraternal organizations may prefer their own members when the preference furthers their mission.²

Beyond employment, the Act governs housing and commercial property transactions, binding property owners, real estate agents, and mortgage lenders. Public accommodations such as hotels, restaurants, retail stores, and theaters must comply. Educational institutions across the Commonwealth are required to keep their environments free of discriminatory practices.

The 180-Day Deadline to File

A complaint must reach the PHRC within 180 days of the discriminatory act. The Commission will refuse an untimely complaint unless there is a basis for equitable tolling, a narrow doctrine that pauses the clock in circumstances like fraud or concealment by the other side.² If the discrimination is ongoing rather than a single event, the 180 days runs from the most recent occurrence.⁵ Missing the deadline generally means losing your state-level remedy for good, so treat it as firm.

To start the process, you complete an Intake Questionnaire from the PHRC. There are separate versions for employment, housing, public accommodation, and education claims, and you can submit online, by mail, or in person at the Harrisburg, Philadelphia, or Pittsburgh regional office.⁶⁷ An intake representative will follow up, then draft a formal complaint from your account for you to review and approve.

What Happens After You File

Once the complaint is docketed, the PHRC must serve it on the respondent within 30 days. The respondent then has 30 days to file a written answer, with a possible 30-day extension.² The Commission pushes for voluntary settlement early. If mediation is not on the table or does not work, the PHRC opens a formal investigation, interviewing the parties and witnesses, reviewing documents, and sometimes holding a fact-finding conference.

Investigations end one of two ways. A finding of no probable cause means the evidence did not support the claim; you are notified by mail and told how to appeal. A finding of probable cause moves the case toward settlement, and if that fails, to a public hearing. At the hearing stage the PHRC provides an attorney at no cost, or you can bring your own. The hearing produces a legally enforceable order, and either side can appeal to the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania.

Taking the Case to Court

Filing with the PHRC does not lock you in permanently. If a year passes after your complaint is filed and the Commission has neither dismissed the case nor produced a settlement, the PHRC must notify you, and you gain the right to sue in the Court of Common Pleas. You then have two years from the date of that notice to file.⁸

In court a judge can order the employer to stop the discriminatory practice, reinstate or hire you, award back pay reaching up to three years before you filed the complaint, and grant other legal or equitable relief. A prevailing complainant can also be awarded attorney fees and costs. A losing defendant can only recover fees from you by showing the complaint was brought in bad faith.⁸

What You Can Recover

After a hearing, the PHRC can order the respondent to stop the discriminatory practice and take corrective steps, including reinstatement or hiring, back pay, reasonable accommodations, reimbursement of travel expenses tied to the complaint, compensation for lost work during the proceedings, and other documented out-of-pocket costs.²

For housing and commercial property discrimination, the Commission can also award actual damages, including compensation for humiliation and embarrassment, plus civil penalties that escalate with repeat violations: up to $10,000 for a first violation, up to $25,000 for a second within five years, and up to $50,000 for a third or more within seven years.²

The Act does not allow punitive damages, and federal courts have repeatedly confirmed that limitation.⁹ What it does not do is cap compensatory damages. Federal Title VII combines compensatory and punitive damages under a $300,000 ceiling even for the largest employers.¹⁰ A Pennsylvania court can award whatever compensatory amount the evidence supports. For cases involving serious, well-documented harm, that uncapped recovery can exceed what Title VII allows; for cases whose strongest argument would have been punitive damages against a bad-faith employer, Title VII may fit better.

Retaliation Is Its Own Claim

The Act separately makes it unlawful for an employer, employment agency, or labor organization to punish someone for opposing a forbidden practice, filing a complaint, testifying, or assisting an investigation or hearing.² You do not need to win your underlying complaint for a retaliation claim to stand. Even if the original allegation turns out to be unfounded, punishing you for raising it is a separate violation.

Retaliation reaches the obvious actions like firing, demotion, and suspension. It also reaches subtler moves: reassignment to undesirable shifts, exclusion from meetings, cut hours, or unjustifiably negative reviews after a complaint. The test is whether the action would discourage a reasonable person from coming forward. Retaliation is filed as its own complaint, following the same process.

How State and Federal Filings Fit Together

The PHRC is designated a Fair Employment Practices Agency by the EEOC, and the two agencies share work. A charge filed with either is automatically dual-filed with the other, so a single complaint preserves both your state and federal rights, and the agencies decide which one investigates.¹¹

Dual filing also affects the federal deadline. The standard EEOC filing period is 180 days, but it stretches to 300 calendar days in states like Pennsylvania that have an agency enforcing an equivalent law.¹² That mismatch trips people up. You have 180 days for the state claim and 300 for the federal one, so if you are past 180 but under 300, the state claim may already be gone while the federal one is still available. Filing early with either agency avoids the problem.

1
Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission. About the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission
2
Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania Human Relations Act
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Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission. Guidance on Discrimination on the Basis of Sex Under the PHRA
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Pennsylvania General Assembly. House Bill 439 Information
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Pennsylvania Code. 16 Pa. Code 42.14
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Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission. Attorney Forms
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Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission. Contact Us
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New York Codes, Rules and Regulations. Pennsylvania Code 43 PS 962 – Construction and Exclusiveness of Remedy
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GovInfo. USCOURTS-paed-5_13-cv-01609
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U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Remedies For Employment Discrimination
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U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. State and Local Programs
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U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Time Limits For Filing A Charge