Exhaustion and EEOC Intake Errors

In Seredina v. W.L. Gore & Associates, 2025 WL 2257538 (D. Ariz. Aug. 7, 2025), the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona granted in part and denied in part the employer’s motion for partial summary judgment, offering a useful refresher on exhaustion of administrative remedies and the practical impact of Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) intake errors. 

The plaintiff, a deaf employee whose primary language is American Sign Language (ASL), alleges that her employer stopped providing interpreters after initially doing so, leaving her effectively excluded from the workplace and ultimately resulting in her wrongful termination. After she was terminated, the plaintiff contacted the EEOC to file a charge, obtained a right‑to‑sue on the original charge, and later filed an amended charge after retaining counsel. Between the original and amended EEOC charges, the plaintiff filed a civil suit in which she asserted Americans with Disabilities Act and Arizona Civil Rights Act claims for discrimination, wrongful termination, failure to accommodate, retaliation, and hostile work environment. As relevant here, the employer moved for partial summary judgment on (among other things) exhaustion and timeliness grounds. 

Exhaustion of Administrative Remedies

Specifically, the employer alleged that the plaintiff failed to exhaust administrative remedies because her original EEOC charge did not mention facts related to her claims for failure to accommodate, retaliation, or hostile work environment. The district court applied the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit’s “utmost liberality” standard for construing charges by those unschooled in formal pleading and, based on a theory that the EEOC agent’s negligence was at play, considered EEOC intake notes to determine whether the plaintiff adequately raised those issues with respect to her EEOC charge. The court found that the EEOC notes reflected the plaintiff's requests for an interpreter, inconsistent responses to those requests by different supervisors, her complaints to management, and her resulting injury—all details that were omitted from the sparse EEOC charge.

Based on the intake notes, the court found it plausible the EEOC agent’s omissions failed to properly frame the charge and held the plaintiff properly exhausted claims for denial of reasonable accommodations and retaliation. 

Practical Takeaways for Employers

Seredina is a reminder that an EEOC charge itself is not always the complete universe of information when it comes to exhaustion of administrative remedy defenses. Courts will liberally construe charges filed by unrepresented plaintiffs, particularly in disability cases, even going so far as to consider intake notes to correct incomplete charge forms. Employers facing claims from former employees following an EEOC charge should contact experienced counsel to help them assess all possible defenses.