Applies to employment in the United States, private and public sector, with the territorial and state exceptions named individually.
Not legal advice. The rules change from state to state, and federal courts do not all read them the same way. No page can cover your own facts, so if a deadline or a decision is close, talk to an employment lawyer where you live.
No federal law and no US state law makes workplace bullying unlawful on its own. You can only act on it when it attaches to something the law already protects: a protected characteristic, protected activity, a recognized safety hazard, or conduct extreme enough to meet a state’s emotional-distress claim. One US jurisdiction is the exception, and it is not a state: Puerto Rico.
Key takeaways
- Outside Puerto Rico, no US law bans workplace bullying on its own. It must tie to a protected characteristic, protected activity, group action, a safety hazard or an emotional-distress claim.
- Puerto Rico alone in the US lets an employee sue for bullying itself. Act 90-2020 allows double damages, with a one-year limit and required steps before suing.
- Tennessee, California and Utah give employees no claim. Tennessee shields employers that adopt a model policy, California requires training, and Utah’s complaint route leaves out private-sector workers.
- Outside Puerto Rico, a complaint that only says bullying creates a policy duty but no legal duty. Tie it to a law instead: discrimination, retaliation or a group complaint.
- For bullying because of a protected characteristic, the EEOC charge is due 180 days after the act, or 300 days where a state or local agency enforces a parallel law.
Puerto Rico’s Act 90-2020 does what state legislatures have been asked to do and have not done. The Workplace Bullying Institute drafts the model bill and records that bill as introduced in 32 states (Healthy Workplace Bill, read 3 September 2026).
None of those states has enacted it. Everywhere else, the question is not whether the conduct was bullying. It is which existing law the conduct happens to trip.
Is workplace bullying illegal in the United States?
It is not, as a category. The federal anti-discrimination statute makes it unlawful for an employer to discriminate against an individual “because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin” (42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a)(1)). Cruelty is not on that list. Neither is humiliation, exclusion, shouting, or a manager who makes one person’s job impossible.
The Supreme Court has said so directly. In Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc., 523 U.S. 75 (1998), the Court wrote that “Title VII does not prohibit all verbal or physical harassment in the workplace; it is directed only at ‘discriminat[ion] … because of … sex'” (523 U.S. at 80, Opinion of the Court). The same reasoning runs across the other protected bases.
The EEOC states the covered grounds on its own harassment page: conduct “based on race, color, religion, sex (including sexual orientation, transgender status, or pregnancy), national origin, older age (beginning at age 40), disability, or genetic information (including family medical history)” (EEOC, Harassment, read 3 September 2026). Bullying is not one of them.
Check the date. The EEOC harassment page carries a banner reading: “The information on this webpage is being reviewed for compliance with the law and executive orders and will be revised.” The statutes and the Supreme Court decisions it summarizes are unaffected. Quotations here carry a read date for that reason.
Where the conduct does track a protected characteristic, the test is severity or pervasiveness rather than the label anyone put on it. That test, and the case law behind it, is set out in what actually counts as a hostile work environment. If the complaint is that one person is treated worse than comparable colleagues, the line between unfair and illegal is drawn in favoritism at work.
Which US laws can reach a bully?
Four, and each one needs something the bullying itself does not give you. A fifth, the state claim for emotional distress, sits outside this table and comes in the next section.
| Route | What it needs beyond the conduct | What it gives you |
|---|---|---|
| Title VII, ADEA, ADA, GINA | A protected characteristic the conduct is because of | An EEOC charge, then a suit |
| Retaliation provisions | Protected activity that came first | A separate claim with its own standard |
| National Labor Relations Act § 7 | Conduct concerning terms and conditions, done with or for other employees | An unfair labor practice charge |
| OSH Act § 5(a)(1) | A recognized hazard risking death or serious physical harm | A citation against the employer |
The labor law route was written for something else. Section 7 gives employees the right “to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection” (29 U.S.C. § 157), and no union has to be involved for it to apply.
Check the exclusions before relying on it. The definition of “employee” excludes agricultural laborers, domestic service in a private home, a person employed by a parent or spouse, independent contractors and supervisors, and the definition of “employer” excludes the United States and any state or political subdivision (29 U.S.C. § 152(2), (3)). Supervisors and public employees are outside § 7 entirely.
The NLRB puts the practical version plainly: “A single employee may also engage in protected concerted activity if he or she is acting on the authority of other employees, bringing group complaints to the employer’s attention, trying to induce group action, or seeking to prepare for group action” (NLRB, Concerted Activity, read 3 September 2026).
The same page states that protection can be lost by saying or doing something “egregiously offensive or knowingly and maliciously false.”
Safety law reaches less far than it sounds. OSHA states that “there are currently no specific OSHA standards for workplace violence” (OSHA, Workplace Violence: Enforcement, read 3 September 2026). It reaches the subject only through the general duty clause, which requires a workplace “free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm” (29 U.S.C. § 654(a)(1)).
Common misreading. An OSHA citation is issued to the employer and produces a penalty payable to the government. It is not a damages claim, and it does not compensate the worker who reported the hazard.
Retaliation is what opens up after you complain, not before, and it is a separate claim of its own. How it is proved, and why its causation standard is stricter than it looks, is covered in how to prove workplace retaliation.
Can you sue the bully personally for the distress?
Intentional infliction of emotional distress is what is left when no protected characteristic is in the case. Two things get in the way, and neither has anything to do with how bad the conduct was. Both are shown here in Texas law, which sets the standard out clearly. The rules vary by state, so check your own.
The first is the standard. In GTE Southwest, Inc. v. Bruce, 998 S.W.2d 605 (Tex. 1999), the Texas Supreme Court set out four elements: intentional or reckless conduct, conduct that is extreme and outrageous, causation, and severe distress. The court also made clear that insensitive or rude behavior, insults, indignities and petty oppressions do not meet that standard.
Ordinary employment disputes do not qualify. The conduct in that case ran for years and included sustained, physically threatening behavior, not unpleasantness.
Second, the claim has a built-in limit. Where the complaint is really about another wrong, the distress tort is treated as a gap-filler and is not available alongside it (Hoffmann-La Roche Inc. v. Zeltwanger, 144 S.W.3d 438 (Tex. 2004)). Under that rule, a case strong enough to support a discrimination claim may not support a distress claim alongside it.
Workers’ comp can block this. In many states, workers’ compensation is the only claim you can bring against your employer for an injury caused by the job. California is one of those states, under Cal. Lab. Code § 3602(a). Emotional injury caused by a supervisor often falls inside that rule, which is why the bully rather than the company may end up being the one you sue. Check your own state’s rule before deciding who to sue.
What does Puerto Rico’s Act 90-2020 actually give an employee?
A direct claim, which is what makes it the only one of its kind in the United States. Act 90-2020, as amended by Act 106-2024, is codified at 29 L.P.R.A. §§ 3111–3124. The Institute headlines it “Puerto Rico Enacts First Workplace Bullying Law in the U.S.” and records that Governor Wanda Vázquez Garced signed House Bill 306 on 7 August 2020 (Healthy Workplace Bill, read 3 September 2026).
Article 4(3) defines acoso laboral as malicious, unwanted, repeated and abusive conduct, whether verbal, written or physical, carried out by the employer, its agents, supervisors or employees. It must be arbitrary, unreasonable or capricious, and outside the employer’s legitimate business interests.
The conduct must create an intimidating, humiliating, hostile or offensive working environment. Article 5 then makes an employer who commits, encourages or permits it civilly liable.
Two provisions carry the weight. Article 11 sets liability at “el doble del importe de los daños” (twice the amount of the damages caused). Article 12 sets a one-year limitation period, running from the moment the employee felt subjected to the alleged harassment rather than from any later event.
Article 10 sets out steps you have to finish before a court will hear the case. The employee must first raise the matter through the employer’s own adopted protocol. If that is unsuccessful, the next stop is the Judicial Branch’s alternative dispute resolution bureau. Only after showing that this mechanism was exhausted can the civil action be filed.
Article 6 matters more than the double damages. An employer who commits workplace harassment cannot invoke the employer immunity conferred by Puerto Rico’s workers’ compensation statute, because the Act treats the harassment as a wrongful act committed with intent to injure. That is the exclusivity bar described in the previous section, removed by statute.
Article 8 does something none of the state laws here do. It lists nine kinds of conduct that count, and seven that do not. The second list is the useful one. Expressly outside the definition are:
- the legitimate exercise of a supervisor’s disciplinary authority;
- requirements protecting confidentiality, or the employee’s loyalty to the employer;
- rules or memoranda issued to run the operation, maximize efficiency, or evaluate staff;
- requests for extra cooperation where the service or a difficult situation needs it;
- administrative steps ending a contract for just cause or at the end of a fixed term;
- steps taken to enforce HR rules or the terms of the employment contract;
- steps taken to comply with duties and prohibitions imposed by law.
What each article of Act 90-2020 does:
| Article | What it does |
|---|---|
| Article 4(3) | Defines acoso laboral (workplace harassment): repeated, malicious, arbitrary conduct outside legitimate business interests that creates a hostile environment |
| Article 5 | Makes an employer who commits, encourages or permits it civilly liable |
| Article 6 | Stops the employer from claiming workers’ compensation immunity |
| Article 8 | Lists nine kinds of conduct that count and seven that do not |
| Article 10 | Requires the employee to use the employer’s protocol, then the Judicial Branch’s dispute resolution bureau, before suing |
| Article 11 | Sets liability at twice the damages caused |
| Article 12 | Sets a one-year limit, counted from when the employee felt subjected to the harassment |
Why are the Tennessee, California and Utah statutes not bullying laws?
Because none of the three was written to give an employee a claim. The Institute’s own tracker lists California and Utah as training-only mandates, and Tennessee’s Act is narrower still.
Tennessee’s Healthy Workplace Act directed a state commission to write a model anti-bullying policy, which “each employer may adopt.” The operative section is the next one. An employer that adopts it “is immune from suit for any employee’s abusive conduct that results in negligent or intentional infliction of mental anguish,” and the statute adds that “nothing in this section creates a cause of action against an employer who does not adopt” it (Tenn. Code Ann. § 50-1-504(a), (b), read 3 September 2026).
Read in order, the Act is a shield. Adopting the policy removes a route the employee would otherwise have had, and declining to adopt it creates nothing.
The two definitions do not match. Its definitions section defines “employer” as “a private employer and a state or local governmental entity,” but defines “employee” only as “an employee of any county, metropolitan government, municipality, or other political subdivision of this state” (Tenn. Code Ann. § 50-1-502, read 3 September 2026).
The immunity in § 50-1-504 is written in terms of “employer”; the defined class of “employee” is a public one. Read both definitions before assuming which employers the immunity actually reaches.
California’s provision is a training mandate. An employer with five or more employees must provide harassment prevention training, and “shall also include prevention of abusive conduct as a component of the training and education” (Cal. Gov. Code § 12950.1(a)(1), (a)(2)).
The same section defines abusive conduct as workplace conduct “with malice, that a reasonable person would find hostile, offensive, and unrelated to an employer’s legitimate business interests,” adding that “a single act shall not constitute abusive conduct, unless especially severe and egregious” (§ 12950.1(h)(2)).
So California has a statutory definition of abusive conduct and no claim attached to it. The definition exists to describe what the training must cover.
Utah’s Public Employees’ Healthy Workplace Act goes one step further and still stops short. It gives an employee a written complaint route, requires the employer’s HR department to investigate, and requires an administrative review of the findings (Utah Code § 67-26-202). But “employer” there means a state executive branch agency or an independent entity (§ 67-26-102), so a private-sector worker in Utah is outside it entirely.
The Institute’s tracker states that “32 States Have Introduced the HWB” and that “[i]n the 2025-26 two-year legislative session, the HWB is active in New York,” where S1893 was introduced on 14 January 2025 and referred to the Senate Labor Committee.
The same tracker describes California and Utah as having “passed training-only mandates,” which is the reading this page reached from the statutory text itself (Healthy Workplace Bill, read 3 September 2026). None of the 32 has enacted the bill.
Why does bullying advice from other countries not fit a US workplace?
Because advice written for the United Kingdom and Australia describes remedies with no US equivalent, and that wording travels further than the jurisdiction it belongs to.
In Australia, a worker in a covered business can apply to the Fair Work Commission for an order to stop bullying. The Commission’s own benchbook states that bullying occurs where “an individual or group of individuals repeatedly behaves unreasonably towards a worker or a group of workers at work” and “the behaviour creates a risk to health and safety,” under Fair Work Act 2009 s 789FD(1).
Reasonable management action carried out in a reasonable manner is excluded by s 789FD(2) (Benchbook: Orders to stop bullying, published 13 June 2023).
In England and Wales, the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 makes a course of conduct amounting to harassment actionable in civil proceedings, with damages available “for (among other things) any anxiety caused by the harassment and any financial loss resulting from the harassment” (Protection from Harassment Act 1997, s 3(1)–(2)). No protected characteristic is required.
Neither provision has a US counterpart. Advice that tells a reader to apply for a stop-bullying order, or to sue for harassment without any discrimination in the case, is describing a remedy that does not exist in American law. The tell is the vocabulary: “reasonable management action” and “course of conduct” are statutory terms in those systems and mean nothing in a US filing.
Nobody counts this. The EEOC reports charges by statute and by basis rather than by workplace issue, so no federal series counts bullying complaints. There is no federal law creating one to count. A national prevalence figure for workplace bullying therefore comes from private survey work rather than an official count, so check the sample and the method before quoting one.
When the conduct comes from a coordinated group rather than one person, the problem has its own name and its own studies. Heinz Leymann’s Mobbing and psychological terror at workplaces, Violence and Victims 5(2) 119–126 (1990), is where the term entered the research, and the dynamic is set out in workplace mobbing.
Where the source is a single manager rather than a group, signs of a toxic boss covers the supervisory-status question that decides who the employer is liable for.
How should a bullying complaint be worded?
So that it names a law, not a feeling. A complaint that says “I am being bullied” creates a duty under the employer’s own policy and, outside Puerto Rico, no duty under any statute. Describe the same events as discrimination, as retaliation, or as a group complaint, and the employer is on notice in a way the law recognizes.
Complaint wording: the sentences that carry legal weight
I am reporting conduct I believe is based on [protected characteristic]. Since [date], [name] has [conduct], and has not done this to [comparator]. I told [name] on [date] that this was unwelcome. It continued. I am asking the company to investigate and to stop the conduct.
What to notice: each line does one job. The first names the basis, which is what converts the complaint from a policy matter into a statutory one. The second supplies the comparison. The third establishes that the conduct was unwelcome and known to be. The fourth is the request, which fixes the date the employer was on notice.
Where no protected characteristic is involved, the other option is to make it collective. A complaint about a supervisor’s conduct as it affects working conditions can fall inside § 7 when it is raised with colleagues or on their authority, and one employee acting alone is not shut out of it: the NLRB’s description covers a single employee bringing group complaints to the employer or trying to induce group action.
Whichever wording fits, the record matters more, and it has to exist before you complain rather than after. What notes written at the time need to contain to hold up later is set out in how to document workplace mistreatment. What you can and cannot be required to do once an investigation opens is in your rights in an HR investigation.
What should you do this week?
In order:
- Decide which law your facts fit before you write anything. A protected characteristic, protected activity, group action, a safety hazard, a state emotional-distress claim, or none of them. That choice decides every later step, and it is very hard to change once a complaint is filed.
- Write down the incidents with dates, witnesses and exact words. Notes written at the time are the difference between a pattern and a memory.
- If none of them fits, ask whether a colleague will raise it with you. That single fact can move the situation from unprotected to protected under § 7.
- If the conduct is because of a protected characteristic, note the filing deadline now. It is 180 days from the discriminatory act, extended to 300 days where a state or local agency enforces a parallel law (42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(e)(1)). The steps are in how to file an EEOC complaint.
- Do not quit to escape it before you read the test. Quitting only becomes a claim if you meet a hard test, and that test is set out in constructive discharge.
Common questions about workplace bullying
Can you sue your employer for workplace bullying?
Not for bullying as such, unless you work in Puerto Rico. Everywhere else your facts have to fit one of four laws, and only two of them end in a case you can file: harassment because of a protected characteristic, and retaliation. The other two go elsewhere. Group action under the National Labor Relations Act gets you an unfair labor practice charge, and the OSH Act gets the employer a citation, not damages for you. A state claim for emotional distress sits outside those four.
Does HR have to do anything about a bullying complaint?
Under the employer’s own policy, whatever that policy says; under federal law, only where the complaint puts the employer on notice of harassment based on a protected characteristic. A complaint written in the language of bullying alone may create a policy obligation and no legal one, which is why the wording of the complaint matters more than its length.
Is a boss who bullies everyone equally breaking the law?
Not on the discrimination statutes alone. Title VII reaches conduct because of a protected characteristic, so treating everyone the same way removes the comparison the law needs. The Supreme Court stated in Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc., 523 U.S. 75, 80 (1998), that the statute does not prohibit all verbal or physical harassment in the workplace. Where the pattern is intent to force a resignation rather than discrimination, the shape is different again. See quiet firing.
Which US state has a workplace bullying law?
No state has one that lets a bullied employee sue. Puerto Rico, a US territory, has Act 90-2020, which creates a civil action with double damages. Tennessee gives employers immunity for adopting a model policy, California requires abusive-conduct training, and Utah gives public employees a complaint process. None of the three creates an employee claim.
Sources
- 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2: Unlawful employment practices (Cornell LII)
- 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5: Enforcement provisions (Cornell LII)
- Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc., 523 U.S. 75 (1998)
- Harassment, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
- 29 U.S.C. § 157: Right of employees as to organization, collective bargaining, etc. (Cornell LII)
- 29 U.S.C. § 152: Definitions (Cornell LII)
- Concerted Activity, National Labor Relations Board
- 29 U.S.C. § 654: Duties of employers and employees (Cornell LII)
- Workplace Violence: Enforcement, Occupational Safety and Health Administration
- Ley 90-2020, Ley para Prohibir y Prevenir el Acoso Laboral en Puerto Rico, as amended (29 L.P.R.A. §§ 3111-3124)
- Tenn. Code Ann. § 50-1-502: Part definitions (Healthy Workplace Act)
- Tenn. Code Ann. § 50-1-503: Model policy
- Tenn. Code Ann. § 50-1-504: Immunity of employer when policy adopted; cause of action against employer not created
- Cal. Gov. Code § 12950.1: Sexual harassment training and education; abusive conduct
- Utah Code § 67-26-102: Definitions (Utah Public Employees’ Healthy Workplace Act)
- Utah Code § 67-26-202: Abusive conduct complaint, investigation, and administrative review
- Healthy Workplace Bill: HWB Legislation, Workplace Bullying Institute
- Benchbook: Orders to stop bullying, Fair Work Commission (Australia), published 13 June 2023
- Protection from Harassment Act 1997 (UK), section 3: Civil remedy
- GTE Southwest, Inc. v. Bruce, 998 S.W.2d 605 (Tex. 1999)
- Hoffmann-La Roche Inc. v. Zeltwanger, 144 S.W.3d 438 (Tex. 2004)
- Cal. Lab. Code § 3602: Exclusive remedy of employee against employer
- H. Leymann, Mobbing and psychological terror at workplaces, Violence and Victims 5(2) 119-126 (1990)
Review schedule. The Healthy Workplace Bill state count and the EEOC harassment page banner are re-checked quarterly; the Puerto Rico, Tennessee, California and Utah statutes annually, including the subdivision lettering of Cal. Gov. Code § 12950.1, which has been renumbered by amendment before; the federal statutes and Supreme Court holdings annually. The Verified date above is set at import and is the date the facts here were last checked. General information on US law, not legal advice for a particular situation.