Senate committee pauses HB 2957A after debate over BOLI right-to-sue timing and a proposed compromise

The Senate Committee on Labor and Business held multiple public hearings on House Bill 2957A on May 15, 2025, and carried the bill over to the committee's next meeting while staff draft a compromise amendment.

The bill would change how BOLI right-to-sue letters interact with civil filing deadlines. Proponents said the measure would preserve low-wage workers’ ability to find counsel and file suit, while business groups warned it could extend liability and legal uncertainty for employers.

Kate Sussman, legal director at Northwest Workers’ Justice Project, told the committee that low-wage workers often struggle to find attorneys after receiving a BOLI notice. “If you have 5 years to file, you have 5 years to file,” Sussman said, arguing the current interplay between BOLI letters and civil statutes of limitations can unfairly shorten the practical time a worker has to sue. Sussman described cases in which workers received a BOLI closure letter with only weeks remaining to file in court and said that reality disincentivizes attorneys from taking such matters.

Opponents including Jenny Dressler of the Oregon Farm Bureau Federation, Paloma Sparks of Oregon Business and Industry, and JL Wilson of the Oregon State Chamber of Commerce said removing the 90-day right-to-sue notice in some circumstances could expose employers to prolonged legal uncertainty. “That 90-day notice gives us a reasonable time limit for what our liability could potentially be,” Dressler said, adding that defending a suit through trial can cost “hundreds of thousands of dollars” for family-owned farms.

Disability Rights Oregon's Ben Gerwitz urged support for the bill on equity grounds, saying people with disabilities often take longer to navigate communication and find counsel and therefore would benefit from extended timelines.

Committee members questioned how the bill's timelines would work in practice. Jessica Santiago, senior deputy legislative counsel, explained an amendment under consideration would tighten timelines in certain cases by requiring that, when BOLI issues a finding of insufficient evidence and one year or less remains on the civil statute of limitations, the complainant must file within the earlier of one year from the notice or the remaining statutory period. Josh Nasby of the Bureau of Labor and Industries told the committee that BOLI has dismissed about 337 complaints during a triage process instituted because of resource constraints, meaning those complainants received a 90-day notice without a full investigation.

Vice Chair Bonham described a drafting approach the committee was exploring: restore a full five-year statute of limitations for complainants whose BOLI cases were dismissed for lack of resources or where BOLI could not complete an investigation, while retaining a one-year filing window for cases in which BOLI completed an investigation and issued a finding of no substantial evidence. "Those people would have had 5 years statute of limitation," Bonham said during the hearing when summarizing the proposed compromise.

No final action was taken. The committee closed the public hearing and set the item to be carried over to next Tuesday so staff can draft the amendment lawmakers discussed and so stakeholders can review the language.

The debate centered on three discrete outcomes the committee distinguished throughout the hearing: (1) cases where BOLI completes an investigation and issues a finding (those would trigger a shortened filing window under the discussed compromise), (2) cases BOLI dismisses during triage for lack of resources (stakeholders sought restoration of the full statutory filing period), and (3) complaints never filed with BOLI (which remain governed by the underlying civil statute of limitations).