Maryland has its own anti-discrimination statute – the Fair Employment Practices Act, found in Maryland Code, State Government Article § 20-601 et seq. – that applies to employment within the state and that, in several significant respects, provides broader protection than the federal statutes most employees know by name. For employees who work in Maryland but are not employed by the federal government, the FEPA opens avenues through the Maryland Commission on Civil Rights that supplement federal EEOC charges. For federal employees working in Maryland, the picture is more complicated, and the threshold question of whether the FEPA applies to their employment situation at all is one that any Maryland federal employee attorney should address at the outset of any discrimination claim analysis. The answer isn’t always what employees expect, and getting it wrong affects which remedies are available and through which forum they can be pursued.
What the Maryland FEPA Actually Covers
The Maryland Fair Employment Practices Act prohibits employment discrimination by employers with 15 or more employees, mirrors federal Title VII in its prohibition on discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, marital status, and disability, and extends protection to several categories that federal law treats differently or doesn’t address at all.
The most significant extensions relative to federal law involve sexual orientation and gender identity. While federal Title VII’s protection for these characteristics was established through the Supreme Court’s Bostock v. Clayton County decision in 2020, Maryland’s FEPA had explicitly included sexual orientation and gender identity as protected characteristics under state law for years prior to that federal development. For employees in Maryland working for private employers or for the state and local government, those protections existed through the FEPA in a broader statutory context than the Title VII interpretive framework that still governs some nuances of the federal claim.
Maryland’s FEPA also provides protections related to genetic information that mirror the federal Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, and the statute’s remedial structure – including the right to file a civil complaint in circuit court after exhausting the MCCR administrative process – creates a distinct pathway from the federal Title VII litigation route.
One important distinction worth noting: the FEPA applies to employers, not just employees, which means the employer-side analysis of coverage thresholds and exemptions differs from the employee-side analysis of who is protected. The 15-employee threshold mirrors Title VII’s minimum coverage standard, but Maryland counties and municipalities have also enacted their own local anti-discrimination ordinances that sometimes extend below the 15-employee threshold – particularly in jurisdictions like Montgomery County, Prince George’s County, and Baltimore City.
The Federal Government Employer Problem: Why Sovereign Immunity Matters
The critical question for federal employees working in Maryland is whether the FEPA applies to the federal government as their employer. The short answer is the same as in the DC context: generally, it does not.
The federal government’s sovereign immunity shields it from state employment laws unless Congress has explicitly waived that immunity for state law claims. Congress has not waived federal sovereign immunity for Maryland FEPA claims. What Congress has done is waive immunity for specific federal employment discrimination claims under Title VII, the Rehabilitation Act, the ADEA, and other federal statutes – and those waivers define the boundaries of what a federal employee can pursue.
The result is the same structural limitation described for the DC Human Rights Act: a career federal employee at the Social Security Administration in Woodlawn, the FDA in Silver Spring, or the NIH in Bethesda cannot file a FEPA discrimination claim against their employing agency. The federal EEO process – the 45-day counseling contact deadline, the formal complaint, the EEOC administrative hearing pathway – is the exclusive remedy for employment discrimination claims against federal agencies. State court is not available. The Maryland Commission on Civil Rights is not available. The FEPA’s civil suit provisions do not reach the federal government as employer.
This is the most important jurisdictional clarification for Maryland federal employees who hear about the FEPA from colleagues in private sector employment and assume the same options are available to them. They are not, and an attorney who tells a federal employee to file an MCCR complaint against their federal agency has made a fundamental error.
Where the FEPA Does Create Genuine Options for Federal Employees
The analysis changes when the federal employee’s situation involves employers or actors beyond the federal agency itself.
Federal employees who hold outside employment with Maryland private employers are fully covered by the FEPA in that employment relationship. Discrimination or harassment by a Maryland private employer where a federal employee also works is governed by the FEPA alongside any applicable federal law.
Federal contractors and subcontractors operating in Maryland – private companies holding federal contracts to provide services at federal facilities – are private employers subject to the FEPA. An employee who works for a government contractor at a federal installation in Maryland, rather than directly for the federal government, is employed by a private entity, and the FEPA’s protections apply to that employment relationship. The line between being a federal employee and being a contractor employee is sometimes blurry in practice – but it matters enormously for determining which legal framework governs a discrimination claim.
Maryland state and local government employees – those who work for the state of Maryland itself, for Maryland counties, or for Maryland municipalities – are not federal employees and are covered by the FEPA without the sovereign immunity limitation. A state employee at the Maryland Department of Health or a county employee in Prince George’s County who experiences discrimination can pursue claims through the MCCR and potentially in Maryland circuit court, in addition to any applicable federal charge.
The MCCR Process and How It Interacts With the Federal EEO System for Private Employers
For Maryland workers covered by both the FEPA and federal Title VII – primarily private sector employees – the MCCR and the EEOC operate under a work-sharing agreement similar to the one that governs the DC OHR and EEOC relationship. Filing a charge with either body automatically cross-files with the other, which means an employee who initiates a complaint with the MCCR also preserves their federal charge without a separate filing.
The statute of limitations for MCCR complaints under the FEPA is two years from the discriminatory act, which is longer than the 300-day federal charge filing period applicable to most private sector employees in deferral states like Maryland. That difference can matter when the events occurred over an extended period or when the employee needed time to determine whether the conduct rose to the level of a cognizable claim.
The MCCR investigates complaints, issues findings, and can order remedies including back pay, reinstatement, compensatory damages, and attorney fees for prevailing complainants. If the MCCR’s process does not resolve the matter to the employee’s satisfaction, a right-to-sue letter allows the employee to proceed in circuit court.
Maryland Law and the Federal Employee: A Careful Threshold Analysis
For most Maryland federal employees, the FEPA’s protections are relevant primarily as background context – understanding what protections exist in the state’s private sector and knowing that those protections don’t extend to the federal employer relationship. But the analysis is not always simple. Federal employees who also have contractor or private employer relationships in Maryland, who are transitioning out of federal employment into Maryland private sector roles, or who work at federal facilities alongside contractor employees all occupy situations where the threshold analysis is worth conducting carefully.
Any Maryland federal employee attorney assessing a discrimination situation should be determining not just which claims exist but which forum has jurisdiction over which claim – and whether the FEPA is relevant to any aspect of the situation. That analysis is part of the threshold work that happens before any filing strategy is settled.
The Mundaca Law Firm represents federal employees and private sector workers throughout Maryland in discrimination claims, EEO complaints, and related employment matters. If you are a federal employee in Maryland and are trying to understand which laws apply to your situation and which remedies are available, contact the firm to schedule a consultation.
