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EEOC Settlement Chart: The Damage Caps by Employer Size, and What Each Remedy Actually Pays
Search for an EEOC settlement chart and you get grids of invented averages. The real chart is statutory: four employer-size tiers that cap compensatory and punitive damages, with back pay, front pay, and attorney’s fees outside them. Here are the tiers, what each remedy pays, and the deadlines from charge to courtroom.
Quick answer
There is no official EEOC settlement chart or average; the agency publishes yearly totals, not per-case figures. What federal law fixes is a ceiling: under 42 U.S.C. 1981a, compensatory and punitive damages combined are capped at $50,000 for employers with 15 to 100 employees, $100,000 for 101 to 200, $200,000 for 201 to 500, and $300,000 for more than 500. Back pay, front pay, and attorney’s fees sit outside those caps, and age and Equal Pay Act claims use liquidated damages equal to back pay instead of compensatory or punitive damages.
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By the CaseValue.law Editorial Team·Last updated and source-checked August 29, 2026·How we estimate
How an EEOC settlement is actually built
The federal caps rise in four steps with employer size; back pay, front pay and fees sit outside them.
An EEOC charge is not a lawsuit, and the agency does not pay awards from a schedule. A charge starts an administrative process: the employer answers in writing, the EEOC may offer mediation, and if the investigation finds reasonable cause the agency must attempt conciliation before it can sue. Money can change hands at any of those points, always negotiated against what a court could later award.
The remedies come from the statute that covers your claim. Title VII, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act allow back pay, reinstatement or front pay, compensatory damages, punitive damages, and attorney’s fees. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act and the Equal Pay Act allow neither compensatory nor punitive damages; they substitute liquidated damages equal to back pay.
Then the caps apply. The damages provision added by the Civil Rights Act of 1991, 42 U.S.C. 1981a, lets a victim of intentional discrimination recover compensatory and punitive damages, but limits the two combined by employer size and does not reach disparate-impact claims. Back pay, interest on it, and the other relief in Title VII’s remedies section are excluded from the capped amount. Valuing a claim means estimating each remedy, applying the cap to the two it covers, and discounting for the risk of losing.
The chart: federal damage caps by employer size
Section 1981a(b)(3) caps the sum of compensatory damages (future pecuniary losses, emotional pain, suffering, inconvenience, mental anguish, loss of enjoyment of life, and other nonpecuniary losses) plus punitive damages, per complaining party. Size means employees in each of 20 or more calendar weeks in the current or preceding calendar year.
15 to 100 employees: $50,000
More than 14 and fewer than 101 employees. Title VII itself applies only to employers with 15 or more employees, so this is the smallest employer the federal cap reaches. Emotional-harm and punitive damages together cannot exceed $50,000, however serious the conduct.
101 to 200 employees: $100,000
More than 100 and fewer than 201 employees. A jury never hears this figure: the statute directs the court not to inform jurors of the limits, so a verdict above the tier is reduced by the judge afterward.
201 to 500 employees: $200,000
More than 200 and fewer than 501 employees. Headcount, not revenue, sets the tier, so a lawyer will pin down payroll numbers for the current and prior year early.
More than 500 employees: $300,000
The top tier. The amounts were fixed in 1991 and the statute has no inflation adjustment, which is why lawyers with large-employer claims often turn to state fair-employment laws, some of which set higher caps or none, or to Section 1981 for race claims.
Not capped: back pay, front pay, interest, and fees
Section 1981a(b)(2) excludes back pay, interest on back pay, and other relief under Title VII’s remedies section, 42 U.S.C. 2000e-5(g), from compensatory damages. In Pollard v. DuPont (2001) the Supreme Court held front pay is outside the cap for the same reason. A prevailing party’s attorney’s and expert fees under 2000e-5(k) are added on top.
Not capped: Section 1981 race claims
Section 1981 guarantees every person the same right to make and enforce contracts as white citizens, including the terms, conditions, and termination of the contractual relationship. Section 1981a(b)(4) says nothing in the caps provision limits relief under Section 1981, so race claims pleaded under it carry no federal ceiling. Ask a lawyer whether your facts support that count.
The remedies, one by one
A demand letter is the sum of these lines. Know which ones your statute allows and which the cap touches.
Back pay
Wages and benefits from the discriminatory act to judgment or settlement, reduced by what you earned or could have earned with reasonable diligence. Under Title VII it cannot accrue from more than two years before the charge. Not capped.
Front pay or reinstatement
Reinstatement is the default remedy for a lost job. When returning is not workable, front pay covers lost compensation from judgment forward in its place. Its duration, which rests on how long a realistic search for comparable work takes, is the most argued input. Not capped.
Compensatory damages
Out-of-pocket losses such as job-search costs and counseling bills, plus emotional harm: mental anguish, inconvenience, loss of enjoyment of life. Available for intentional discrimination under Title VII, the ADA, and GINA. Capped with punitive damages by employer size.
Punitive damages
Reserved for an employer that acted with malice or reckless indifference to your federally protected rights, and never available against a government, government agency, or political subdivision. They share the capped pool with compensatory damages, so a large punitive verdict against a small employer collapses to the tier limit.
Liquidated damages (age and equal-pay claims)
Age and Equal Pay Act claims cannot recover compensatory or punitive damages. Instead the ADEA pays liquidated damages equal to back pay, only for willful violations (29 U.S.C. 626(b)), and the Equal Pay Act adds an equal additional amount to unpaid wages (29 U.S.C. 216(b)).
Attorney’s fees and costs
A prevailing party can recover a reasonable attorney’s fee, including expert fees, as part of costs under 42 U.S.C. 2000e-5(k). Fees are not capped and are paid on top of your recovery, so the longer a strong claim runs, the more it costs the employer to lose.
The timeline: from charge to courtroom
Federal discrimination claims run on deadlines measured in days. Miss one and every remedy above becomes unreachable.
1
File the charge within 180 or 300 days
A charge must be filed before you can sue under Title VII, the ADA, GINA, or the ADEA: 180 calendar days from the discriminatory act, or 300 where a state or local agency enforces a law against the same kind of discrimination (for age claims only a state law extends it). Weekends and holidays count. Federal employees have 45 days to contact an EEO counselor. Equal Pay Act claims skip the charge and go to court within two years, three if willful.
2
Decide on mediation
The EEOC may offer mediation before investigating. It is voluntary for both sides, confidential, and free; a session usually runs three to four hours, and the mediator decides nothing. Charges resolved this way take under three months on average, the agency reports.
3
The investigation
The employer files a written position statement, which you can read and answer through the EEOC’s portal within 30 days. Investigators may request documents, interview witnesses, or visit the workplace. The agency says an investigation averages about ten months, and nothing stops the two sides from settling privately at any point.
4
Determination and conciliation
If the EEOC finds reasonable cause, it must try to resolve the charge through conciliation before it can file its own lawsuit. If it cannot determine that the law was violated, it closes the charge and issues a Notice of Right to Sue. A closure is not a ruling that you lose; it ends the agency’s role and starts yours.
5
The right-to-sue letter
The notice arrives when the EEOC closes the charge, or on request once 180 days have passed since filing. Under the ADEA you may sue 60 days after filing without waiting for one. The letter is a starting gun, not a finding in your favor.
6
Sue within 90 days
From the day you receive the notice you have 90 days to file in court. The window does not pause for settlement talks or the search for a lawyer, which is why the first thing most employment lawyers ask for is the letter and its date.
What moves the number
Two claims under the same cap can settle far apart. The spread comes from evidence and economics: written complaints and the employer’s response; comparators, meaning coworkers outside your protected class treated better for the same conduct; a documented job search, because interim earnings and wages earnable with reasonable diligence reduce back pay; the employer’s size, which fixes the cap; and conduct that reads as malice or reckless indifference, which opens punitive damages. Shifting explanations help you; a clean, dated record of performance problems helps the employer.
The one input you fully control is the record: the termination letter, every evaluation, the handbook, pay stubs, and a dated log of who said what. Then run the numbers before you answer any offer. The discrimination calculator on this site applies back pay, front pay, and emotional-harm frames to your wages and the employer’s size in a few minutes.
List back pay, front pay, emotional harm, punitive exposure, and fees as separate lines, each with a basis. A lump-sum offer is designed to hide which line it discounts.
2
Check the cap against the real headcount
Confirm how many employees the employer had in each of 20 or more weeks of the current or prior year. Emotional-harm and punitive amounts above the tier are not recoverable under federal law, though state law or Section 1981 may change that.
3
Put the tax allocation in the agreement
Back pay, front pay, and severance are taxable wages subject to withholding; emotional-distress money not tied to a physical injury is taxable; punitive damages and interest are always taxable. Ask that the agreement allocate the payment by category, because the IRS generally respects an allocation consistent with the substance of the claims.
4
Read the release before the number
A settlement releases claims you may not have valued yet, retaliation, wage, and contract claims among them. Have a lawyer read the release, the confidentiality clause, and any non-disparagement term before you agree to the amount.
5
Calendar the 90-day deadline the day the letter arrives
Whether or not you expect to sue, calendar the 90-day right-to-sue deadline the day the letter arrives. Settlement talks go quiet, lawyers need time to evaluate, and the deadline does not wait. An expired claim is worth nothing at the table.
Your state changes the rules
State fair-employment agencies often allow longer deadlines and uncapped damages under state law. Pick your state.
Civil Rights Violation claims: the national picture
▸Filing deadlines range from 1 year to 6 years by state (average 2.8 years)
Wrongful Termination claims: the national picture
▸Filing deadlines range from 1 year to 6 years by state (average 2.9 years)
There is no official average. The EEOC publishes totals, not per-case figures: for fiscal year 2025 it reported securing $660 million for 17,680 people, a number that blends small conciliations with large systemic cases. Any site quoting an average EEOC settlement is dividing figures the agency does not publish that way. Value your claim remedy by remedy.
Under 42 U.S.C. 1981a(b)(3), compensatory and punitive damages combined are limited per complaining party to $50,000 for employers with 15 to 100 employees, $100,000 for 101 to 200, $200,000 for 201 to 500, and $300,000 for more than 500. They apply to intentional discrimination under Title VII, the ADA, and GINA, and a jury is never told about them.
No. Section 1981a(b)(2) excludes back pay, interest on it, and other relief under Title VII’s remedies section, and the Supreme Court held in Pollard v. DuPont that front pay is outside the cap too. Attorney’s fees are awarded separately. Only emotional-harm, other nonpecuniary, future pecuniary, and punitive damages count toward the limit.
The EEOC says an investigation averages about ten months, and that charges resolved through mediation close in under three months. After a right-to-sue notice you have 90 days to file, and litigation adds months or years. Many claims settle earlier, so your timeline depends on when both sides decide to deal.
No. You can file a charge through the EEOC’s public portal, by mail, or in person, and the agency’s phone line will start the process and explain how to file, though it does not take charges by phone. A lawyer still earns their fee by framing the charge to name every basis and every adverse act and by reading the deadline correctly; the 180- or 300-day clock keeps running while you look for one.
You have 90 days from receiving it to file a lawsuit, or the federal claim is lost. The letter is not a finding on the merits; it means the agency’s process is over. Under the ADEA you can sue 60 days after filing without a letter, and Equal Pay Act claims never needed one. State-law claims follow their own deadlines, shown in the state module above.
No. Section 1981a(b)(1) allows punitive damages only against a respondent other than a government, government agency, or political subdivision. Public employees can still recover back pay, front pay, compensatory damages within the cap, and attorney’s fees, and state law may add remedies.
A voluntary, confidential, and free session, usually three to four hours, in which a neutral mediator helps you and the employer look for a settlement. The mediator does not decide who is right and issues no decision. If it fails, the charge proceeds to investigation.
Mostly, yes. IRS Publication 4345 says the portion paid for lost wages, including back pay, front pay, and severance, is taxable wages subject to withholding, and emotional-distress money that does not stem from a physical injury or sickness is taxable income. Punitive damages and interest are always taxable. Have the agreement allocate the payment by category and ask a tax professional.
Information on this page reflects laws and published figures as of 2026-08-29. This is general information, not legal or medical advice, and not a prediction for any potential case. Verify current rules with a licensed attorney before making decisions. Learn about our methodology.
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