Why Won’t a Lawyer Take My Employment Case? What a No Really Means and What to Do Next
A lawyer works through these five questions. Were you treated this way because of your race, sex, age, religion, disability, or something else the law protects? Is your employer big enough to be covered? Is the deadline still open? Can you prove what happened with something besides your own memory? Is enough money at stake to pay for the lawsuit?
None of those five asks whether your employer treated you badly. A lawyer only reaches that question after a case clears all five, and most cases stop at one of the five before anyone gets there. Some of the five can still change. Thin proof is often the one you can fix, and gathering the documents is something you can do this week.
We’re Carter Law Group, a female-owned plaintiffs’ firm in Dallas. We take employment cases for Texas workers, we turn some down, and we tell people why.
Before anything else, check your calendar. In Texas, the shortest deadline for a discrimination complaint is 180 days. If you’re anywhere close to that, go file the complaint first and read the rest later. You can file it yourself, without a lawyer.
What counts as a protected reason
The first of the five questions is where most of these calls end, so here’s what the law actually protects. The main federal discrimination law is Title VII of the Civil Rights Act , and it covers race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. The EEOC reads “sex” to include pregnancy, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Two other federal laws cover disability and age 40 and up. All of them also protect you for reporting discrimination or taking part in an investigation, as the EEOC explains. If none of that describes what happened to you, you don’t have a workplace discrimination claim, and a lawyer will say no without getting to the rest of your facts.
Why employment lawyers turn down cases
Here are the nine reasons we hear most often from people who call us after another firm said no. The first five are the five questions, in order.
The treatment was unfair, but not illegal
This is the most common reason, and it’s the hardest one to hear. A boss can yell, play favorites, promote someone worse at the job, and write you up for something he lets other people slide on. All of that can be legal. What matters is the actual reason the employer acted. If it acted because of your race, sex, age, religion, disability, national origin, or pregnancy, or because you complained about one of those, you have a claim.
We say no to more people over this than over anything else, and it’s the part of the job we like least. Before you accept that answer, go back through what you actually told the lawyer. Two things get left out of first phone calls all the time: a protected reason behind what your employer did, and a complaint you made before it happened. Either one changes the answer.
Your employer is too small for the law to cover
Federal discrimination law has a size cutoff, and people who work for small companies usually don’t learn it until a lawyer tells them. Title VII and the Americans with Disabilities Act cover employers with 15 or more employees. The age discrimination law covers private employers with 20 or more, according to the EEOC. Texas state law uses the same 15-employee cutoff.
The count works like this. Your employer is covered if it had 15 or more people on the payroll in each of 20 or more weeks, either during the year this happened to you or the year before. The number of people it employs today doesn’t matter. Count the whole company, not just your store or your department, and count part-time people too. If you can’t work the number out, file anyway. Your deadline keeps running while you try to count, and the EEOC asks for the employee count only if you know it. And if race is part of your claim, a federal law called Section 1981 has no size cutoff at all.
You missed a filing deadline, or you’re about to
Employment complaints have much shorter deadlines than people expect, and a missed deadline ends a case no matter how strong the facts are. Most people hear “statute of limitations” and think in years. In Texas, the first deadline can be as short as 180 days. We turn down cases every week that we would have been glad to file a few months earlier.
Once a deadline passes, that claim is gone for good. Most people have two deadlines though, not one, and missing the first doesn’t always mean missing the second.
There’s no proof besides your own account
A lawyer has to be able to show what happened without relying on you alone. Your employer will tell a different story, and a jury has to pick one. A clear memory of a conversation with no witnesses and nothing in writing won’t carry a case by itself.
The evidence lawyers want most is comparator evidence. That means how your employer treated other people who did the same thing you did. Say a coworker outside your protected group came in late just as often, or made the same mistake, and kept their job while you lost yours. That comparison is what shows the reason wasn’t really your conduct. Write down those names before you do anything else.
Thin evidence is also the most fixable reason on this list. People who get told their evidence is thin often haven’t gathered any yet. They described the situation from memory on a phone call, with their write-ups, emails, texts, and pay records still sitting at home.
The damages are too small to pay for the lawsuit
Running a case costs real money, and what you can recover has to be worth more than that. Federal law caps part of what you can recover based on employer size: $50,000 against a company with 15 to 100 employees, rising to $300,000 against one with more than 500. Lost wages are counted separately and aren’t capped. If you were out of work three weeks and then found a better paying job, there may not be much left to recover.
We’d rather tell you the number is small than put you through years of litigation that pays for nothing. Three things can raise that number. The first is a longer stretch out of work, because lost wages aren’t capped. The second is an employer that turns out to be bigger than the lawyer assumed, since the cap goes up with employer size. The third is a second legal claim that comes out of the same events. Retaliation is the common one, and it can carry a case even when the discrimination claim underneath it looks weak.
You quit instead of being fired
Quitting makes a case harder, because your employer gets to say you chose to leave. A lot of lawyers stop the conversation right there. There’s a legal theory that treats a resignation as a firing, and it’s called constructive discharge. The Supreme Court’s test is whether conditions got so bad that a reasonable person in your situation would have felt forced to quit. How bad it felt to you personally isn’t the test.
Employers usually defend these cases by arguing you should have used the internal complaint process before quitting. That argument goes away if you quit after an official company action, like a demotion, a pay cut, or a reassignment meant to punish you. The reason is straightforward: the company can’t blame you for failing to report a decision the company itself made. If you were pushed out rather than fired, read our page on wrongful termination before you decide it’s over.
Someone told you Texas is at-will and the conversation ended there
Texas really is an at-will state. At-will status still doesn’t end a discrimination case, and people get told that it does. At-will means either you or your employer can end the job at any time, for almost any reason. Two things change that. One is a written employment agreement that sets terms for firing you. The other is a law that limits the reasons an employer is allowed to use. The Texas Workforce Commission points to the discrimination laws as that kind of law, because they take race, sex, age, disability, religion, and national origin off the list of legal reasons to fire someone.
At-will means your employer doesn’t need a good reason to fire you. It doesn’t mean your employer can use an illegal one. If a lawyer’s entire explanation was “Texas is at-will,” you didn’t get an evaluation of your case. Call someone else.
The firm doesn’t handle your kind of case, or it’s full
Some rejections have nothing to do with your case at all. Employment law is a wide field and firms specialize inside it. A firm that handles unpaid wages may never try a discrimination case in court, and the reverse is true too.
The other reason is that the firm is too busy. We’ve tried four cases to verdict in the last two calendar years, which means four cases that went all the way through a jury trial instead of settling. A firm in the middle of a trial turns down cases it would otherwise take, because a trial takes the whole team for weeks. A no like this tells you something about that firm’s schedule and nothing about your case. Call the next firm on your list.
The facts are strong, but the legal theory is hard in Texas
A race discrimination case can get turned down because of the law rather than because of anything wrong with your facts. Appeals from Texas federal courts go to the Fifth Circuit, and that court’s past rulings set the bar a race claim here has to clear. That bar is a real one, not a formality: the Fifth Circuit has held that a coworker treated better has to be nearly identical to you (same job, same supervisor, same kind of conduct) to count as proof, not just similar. A case with the same facts can still be a hard case to win here. Not every firm will say that out loud, which is how someone with a strong race case ends up believing their evidence was the problem.
We take race discrimination cases when the facts support the claim, and we take them to trial. One of those race cases went to a jury and came back with a $1,048,100 verdict. If a firm turned you down without a reason, ask directly whether the problem was the law or your evidence. If it was your evidence, you can go gather more. If it was the law, the next firm is likely to tell you the same thing.
Which of the five applied to you?
You can usually work this out yourself from what you already know. Some firms will tell you which of the five was the problem if you ask them by email. Many won’t, and they’re not required to, so work it out yourself instead of waiting on an answer.
- The reason. Was there a protected reason for what your employer did, or did this happen after you complained about one? If yes to either, the first question isn’t your problem.
- Your employer’s size. Count everyone the company had on the payroll that year. Under 15 and Title VII can’t reach them.
- The deadline. Count the days from the date the thing you’re complaining about happened. Under 180 days and both deadlines are still open.
- The proof. Do you have anything in writing, any witness, or any comparator? If all three are no, that’s likely your answer.
- The money. How long were you out of work, and how much income did you lose? In our experience, a few weeks out of work against a small employer is one of the combinations we turn down most often.
If exactly one of these is your problem, that’s a fixable no. If three or four are, more phone calls won’t change the answer.
How long you have to file in Texas
Texas gives you two discrimination complaint deadlines, one under state law and one under federal law, and they’re different lengths. The state one is shorter. Under Texas state law you get 180 days. The federal deadline is 300 days, and here’s where that number comes from. The base federal deadline is 180 days everywhere, and it stretches to 300 in any state that runs its own discrimination agency enforcing its own discrimination law. Texas runs one, so Texans get the longer federal window that people in some other states don’t get.
The clock starts on the day the thing you’re complaining about happened, which is the day of the firing, the demotion, the pay cut, or the incident itself. It is not the day your paycheck stopped. When several things happened over months, each one carries its own date, and lawyers on both sides fight hard about which date starts the clock. Don’t try to settle that question before you file. Count from the earliest date that could apply, and file before that clock runs out.
One term you’ll see in the table: a right-to-sue notice is the letter the EEOC sends when it closes your charge, and it’s what lets you take the case to court.
| What you’re filing | How long you have | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Discrimination or retaliation charge with the EEOC | 300 days from the day it happened | Federal claims filed in Texas |
| Discrimination complaint with the Texas Workforce Commission | 180 days from the day it happened | Texas state law claims |
| Sexual harassment complaint under Texas state law | 300 days from the day the harassment happened | Texas state law claims |
| Lawsuit after you get a right-to-sue notice | 90 days from the notice | Federal claims |
| Race discrimination claim under Section 1981 | Roughly four years, with no agency filing first | Race claims only |
The gap between 180 days and 300 days is why a missed deadline isn’t always the end. Past 180 days the state complaint is gone, but the federal charge can still be open until day 300, and that’s the second deadline most people have. You only have to file once either way, because the EEOC and the Texas Workforce Commission share complaints and a charge filed with either one counts as filed with both.
You can file the charge yourself, without a lawyer
Filing does three things for you. It stops your deadline from running. It puts your account on the record with a date attached. And it starts the process that produces the right-to-sue notice you need before you can take a discrimination case to court.
The agency closes most charges without deciding that discrimination happened, and that isn’t the end of your case, because the right-to-sue notice comes with the closure and you can still sue. Filing on your own also doesn’t make a lawyer less likely to take you later. We look at cases people filed themselves all the time. Waiting is what hurts you.
The EEOC’s Dallas Field Office is at 207 S. Houston Street, 3rd Floor, and it covers nearly all of Texas. You start at the EEOC Public Portal, where you submit an inquiry and schedule an intake interview by phone, video, or in person. Our guide to filing with the EEOC and the TWC walks through the steps.
If your deadline is anywhere close, stop reading and go do this now. You can come back to the rest.
If you complained and then got punished, look at retaliation
Retaliation is a separate claim from the discrimination you complained about, and it’s often the stronger of the two. It’s also the most common charge the EEOC gets. In 2023, the most recent year the agency published the breakdown, more than half of all charges filed included a retaliation claim.
A retaliation claim doesn’t require you to prove the discrimination actually happened. It requires that you complained in good faith about something the law protects, and that your employer punished you for complaining. So a discrimination claim that looks weak on its own can still support a solid retaliation case. If you reported something and then got fired, demoted, moved, or written up, tell the next lawyer that sequence first and ask about workplace retaliation by name.
A race discrimination case can still be alive under Section 1981
If a lawyer turned down your race discrimination case because your employer was too small, or because the EEOC deadline had passed, there’s another law worth asking about. It’s 42 U.S.C. Section 1981, and it’s a contract law. In the eyes of the law, your job is a contract between you and your employer, and Section 1981 says race can’t be the reason that contract gets denied, changed, or ended. The statute sets no minimum employee count, so the 15-employee cutoff doesn’t apply.
The filing rules are different too. Section 1981 claims go straight to court, so there’s no requirement to file with the EEOC first. Courts also give these claims roughly four years instead of the short agency deadlines. A race case that got turned down last year over a missed 300-day deadline can often still be filed today. If race is part of what happened to you, ask every lawyer you talk to whether Section 1981 fits your situation.
What to do this week
Gather your paperwork before you call anyone else. Pull your termination or resignation letter, your last few performance reviews, any complaint you made to HR, your pay records, and any emails or texts about what happened. Add the names of the coworkers who saw it and the comparators you identified. The EEOC’s filing guidance also asks for your employer’s address and size and the specific dates, so put those on the same page. Write out what you remember while it’s fresh, and don’t delete anything.
Then tell the story in the order it happened. Start with when you were hired and what you did there. Then what you complained about and who you told. Then what happened after that, with dates. End with what it cost you in money. A lawyer can evaluate a timeline much faster than a story, and the order of events is usually what shows whether there’s a retaliation claim in your facts.
Call two or three firms that handle your kind of case, and stop there. If all of them give you the same reason, that reason is real and a fourth call won’t change it. What you tell a lawyer while you’re deciding whether to hire them stays confidential, even when they say no. That’s the Texas rule on prospective clients, and it means telling your story to a second or third firm can’t be used against you later.
When is it really over?
Sometimes it is over, and you deserve a straight answer instead of a polite one. Your case ends for good when all five questions come back no.
The reason: nothing about what happened connects to a protected reason, and you never made a complaint that could support a retaliation claim. Your employer’s size: too small for any of these laws, with no other law that reaches them. The deadline: every one has passed, including the four-year window on race claims. The proof: no witnesses, nothing in writing, no comparator. The money: too little to cover what a case costs to run.
If three or four of those describe your situation, we’d rather see you put your energy into your next job than into more phone calls. If only one describes it, and it’s the proof or the deadline, fix that one and call a firm again.
Frequently asked questions
Do I owe anything if I lose?
Not on the cases we take. We only get paid if we win. Fee arrangements differ between firms, so ask any lawyer you talk to what you would owe if the case doesn’t work out.
Does being turned down by one lawyer hurt my chances with the next one?
No. As far as we know, there’s no shared list of declined cases, and the lawyer you talked to before is required to keep what you told them confidential even though they turned you down, so the next firm has no way to know you called anyone else unless you tell them.
Does a history of bad performance reviews sink my case?
Not by itself, though it does make the case harder, because your employer will use those reviews to explain why it fired you. Timing is what matters most. Reviews that were good for years and turned negative right after you reported something can help your case instead of hurting it.
Does retaliation have to happen right after I complained?
No, but timing is part of the proof. The closer the punishment is to your complaint, the easier it is to connect them. With a longer gap you need something else making the connection, like a supervisor’s comment or a clear change in how you were treated after you complained.
Talk to us before you decide it’s over
We handle discrimination, harassment, retaliation, and wrongful termination for Texas employees, including pregnancy, gender, age, disability, race, religion, national origin, and equal pay claims. Cases that are only about unpaid wages go to a firm that focuses on that work.
If you were fired or pushed out somewhere in Dallas-Fort Worth and another firm already told you no, we’ll take a look. Bring your dates, your paperwork, and whatever reason the last lawyer gave you. We’ll tell you which of the five is the problem and whether you can fix it.
The consultation is free. We take employment cases on contingency, which means you pay us nothing unless we win, and our fee comes out of the recovery. On those cases there are no out-of-pocket costs: no consultation fee, no retainer, and no hourly bills while the case runs. A court can also order your employer to cover attorney’s fees. Talking with us doesn’t make us your lawyers, and what you tell us stays confidential either way.
You can schedule a free consultation with us at 351 W. Jefferson Blvd., Suite 503 in Dallas, where meetings are by appointment only. If your deadline is close, say so when you reach out. That changes how fast we move.
