Recently a smaller federal agency dismissed our client’s claims without justification. Our federal employment attorneys challenged the wrongful action before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s Office of Federal Operations and our client has prevailed in showing the Agency wrongfully dismissed his claims. The EEOC’s OFO has reversed the Agency requiring the investigation into our client’s claims to proceed and ordered the Agency to provide us with a report of the actions it took to resolve our client’s concerns about the processing of the Complainant, or an explanation of why it did not take action.
This shows why we believe generally federal employees should hire a federal employment law firm like ours to help them with their important cases. We have noticed, especially in the better case. agencies will try to pull out the stops (so to speak) to try to slow down or even dismiss meritorious claims. We think that is happening here, though the merits have yet to be investigated. But now they will be.
Specifically, the EEOC noted in its Order:
Complainant initiated contact with an EEO Counselor regarding the instant complaint … within the 45-day limitation period. As such, we conclude the Agency erred in dismissing Complainant’s denial of reasonable accommodation claim as untimely raised.
The Agency also dismissed Complainant’s harassment claim as untimely raised with the EEO counselor. … However, we find that because Complainant’s harassment claim consists, in part, of the timely raised ongoing denial of reasonable accommodation, his entire harassment claim should be considered timely raised.
We also disagree with the Agency that Complainant has failed to state a viable claim of harassment.
… Therefore, since we are remanding the instant complaint for further processing on the reasonable accommodation an harassment issues, the Agency should also provide Complainant with a report of any actions it took to resolve his concerns regarding the processing of his complaint, or an explanation of its reasons for not taking any action.
If you are a federal employee who is interested in seeing if our federal employment law firm would be interested in assisting you, then please feel free to contact us today.