Employment Practices Liability Insurance in Philadelphia

Philadelphia at a glance

Local ordinance

Fair Practices Ordinance

Administered by the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations, separate from state and federal agencies.

State threshold

4 or more employees

The Pennsylvania Human Relations Act reaches well below the federal 15-employee Title VII threshold.

Wage history

Inquiry restricted

Philadelphia restricts asking about or relying on a candidate's prior pay.

Criminal records

Sequenced screening required

The Fair Criminal Record Screening Standards ordinance governs when a record may be considered.

Three layers of employment law inside city limits

Federal Title VII generally starts at 15 employees. The Pennsylvania Human Relations Act reaches employers with four or more employees and is enforced by the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission. Inside Philadelphia, the Fair Practices Ordinance adds a third layer administered by the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations, which has its own intake, investigation and conciliation process and its own enforcement authority.

For a small employer the ordinance is usually the operative law, simply because it reaches further down the size scale than federal law and enumerates protections more broadly than the state statute. A restaurant with a dozen employees in Center City is a covered employer under all three regimes and can face a charge in any of them.

Protected classes and local obligations that drive claims

The Fair Practices Ordinance prohibits discrimination in employment on the bases Pennsylvania law covers and adds categories the state statute does not separately enumerate, including sexual orientation and gender identity, and it has been amended over time to address hair texture and protective hairstyles. Philadelphia has also layered on employment ordinances that generate their own paper trails: a wage-history ordinance restricting inquiry into and reliance on a candidate's prior pay, the Fair Criminal Record Screening Standards ordinance governing when and how records may be considered, the city's paid sick leave ordinance, and fair workweek scheduling rules covering large retail, hospitality and food service employers.

None of those ordinances is an insurance product problem on its own. The pattern we see is that a routine termination becomes a discrimination charge, and the investigation then surfaces a posting that asked for salary history or a background check run out of sequence. That is what turns a defensible matter into a negotiated one, and it is the reason we push Philadelphia clients toward carriers whose employment practices policies include HR hotline and handbook support.

How a Philadelphia charge proceeds

A complainant may file with the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations, the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, or the EEOC, and the agencies have work-sharing relationships so a single filing can be dual-filed. The Commission investigates, may hold a public hearing, and can order relief; the ordinance also permits a complainant to proceed in court after the administrative process in specified circumstances, with attorney's fees available.

Filing deadlines vary by forum and are shorter than most employers assume. The operational rule is the same one that applies everywhere: the day a charge, demand letter or agency questionnaire arrives, it goes to the carrier. Employment practices liability is claims-made coverage and reporting is a condition, not a courtesy.

What Philadelphia employers should have in place

The documentation that wins these cases is unglamorous: a current handbook with an acknowledged anti-harassment and complaint procedure, job postings scrubbed of wage-history questions, a background-check process that follows the city's sequence, sick-leave accrual records, and consistent progressive discipline notes written before the termination rather than after it. Employers subject to fair workweek rules should retain schedule change records, because scheduling claims and retaliation claims travel together.

We shop Philadelphia accounts across carriers that write third-party EPL as well as employee claims, because a city employer's exposure often includes customers and patrons alleging discrimination in service. Where the account also has Pennsylvania locations outside the city, we make sure the policy is written for the whole footprint rather than the city alone.

Who we write this for in Philadelphia

Philadelphia employment practices FAQs