What employee lawsuits actually cost a Florida business

The claim that still shows up most

The price of EPLI, for a clean account, has been relatively calm. Willis Towers Watson’s 2026 marketplace outlook put typical employment-practices renewals in a flat-to-plus-5-percent range. Several established markets still treat Florida as a higher-risk state, in the same conversation as California, New York, New Jersey, and Illinois. Calm pricing is not the same thing as a calm workplace.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reported 88,201 new charges for the federal fiscal year that ended in 2025 — about even with the year before — and said it secured $660 million for 17,680 people. A large share of that money was collected before a lawsuit was ever filed.

Harassment, discrimination, and retaliation are still the everyday EPLI claims. Retaliation — “I spoke up, and then my hours disappeared / I was written up / I was fired” — has been the single most common type of EEOC charge for years. Florida is an at-will state, which means you can end a job for a lawful reason or for no reason. It does not mean you can end a job because someone reported harassment, filed a workers’ compensation claim, asked for a pregnancy accommodation, or complained about pay. Defense bills start before anyone talks about a settlement.

If software helps you say no, you still own the decision

A lot of businesses now let a hiring platform rank résumés, score interviews, or suggest who to call back. The EEOC’s position has been consistent: you cannot hand that duty to a vendor and walk away. If the tool screens out people because of age, disability, race, or sex — even by accident, because it learned from old hiring patterns — the employer is still in the lawsuit.

The case lawyers keep citing is Mobley v. Workday, a proposed class action in federal court in California. In June 2026 a judge let important pieces of that case go forward, including claims under California’s fair-employment law tied to how the screening tools were designed and run. Workday denies that its tools make hiring decisions or discriminate. The point for a Florida employer is simpler: the applicant still sues the company that used the tool.

Most EPLI policies still treat a bad employment decision the same whether a person or a program made it. A smaller group of carriers — a Burns & Wilcox broker put it at about one in ten EPLI placements — have started attaching broad “AI exclusions” to the whole management-liability package. A few markets are doing the opposite and writing affirmative wording. Silent coverage, an exclusion, and an affirmative grant are three different policies. Know which tools you use, keep a human in the loop on any no-hire or termination recommendation, and keep the notes. The vendor’s contract almost never picks up this risk.

Both keeping a DEI program and dropping one can create a claim

In June 2025 the U.S. Supreme Court decided Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services, unanimously. The Court said Title VII does not make majority-group employees climb a higher hill to bring a discrimination case. That decision is now part of how these files get pleaded.

Companies that still use race- or sex-conscious goals, fellowships, or shortlists are seeing one kind of lawsuit. Companies that abruptly shut those programs down are seeing another: hostile-environment and retaliation claims from people who took part in the old program or objected to the new one. Carriers have started asking about this on EPLI applications — not as a political test, as a claims test.

For a Florida restaurant group or a trade contractor, the useful version is not a culture-war speech. It is: write one set of hiring and promotion rules. Apply them the same way. If you change a program, write down why, tell people clearly, and do not discipline the person who asked a question about it the week before.

The expensive employee claim EPLI usually will not pay

Unpaid overtime, tip-credit mistakes, off-the-clock closing work, and “1099s” who look like employees are wage-and-hour claims. They often arrive as a group case, not a single former bartender. Standard EPLI forms exclude that. Some carriers will sell a small defense-cost limit. Paying the back wages themselves is a different, harder coverage to buy. Willis Towers Watson’s 2026 outlook showed wage-and-hour pricing in the Bermuda market still moving up.

This matters in Florida right now because of a date already on the calendar. Under the state constitution, Florida’s minimum wage makes its last scheduled one-dollar step on September 30, 2026, to $15.00 an hour for non-tipped employees, then moves to inflation adjustments in later years. Tipped cash wages move with that schedule. That is a payroll, poster, and classification project — not something to assume your EPLI policy will fund if the Department of Labor or a collective action shows up.

Florida’s lawsuit clock got clearer on July 1

Governor DeSantis signed House Bill 1407 in May. It took effect July 1, 2026. It does not change what the Florida Civil Rights Act forbids. It does change when a person has to file a civil lawsuit after they charge discrimination.

In short: if the Florida Commission on Human Relations finds reasonable cause, or the EEOC issues a Notice of Right to Sue, the state-court lawsuit generally must be filed within one year of the earlier of those two dates. If neither agency acts within 180 days, the outer deadline is 18 months from the date the complaint was filed. If you receive an EEOC right-to-sue letter, do not treat it as “only a federal 90-day problem.” Under the new statute it can also start the Florida clock. Tell your lawyer and your insurance company the same week.

The Florida Civil Rights Act still applies to employers with 15 or more employees and still includes marital status, which federal Title VII does not. Smaller shops are not off the hook for federal claims that use a lower headcount, and they are not off the hook for retaliation.

What we want you to do this month

• Confirm you actually have EPLI — not just a general liability policy and workers’ compensation.
• Ask whether wage-and-hour is excluded, limited to defense costs, or separately endorsed.
• Ask whether your form is silent on AI, excludes it, or expressly covers employment decisions that used a tool.
• Update the employee handbook, the harassment-reporting path, and manager training if those documents still say 2022.
• Before September 30, have payroll check minimum wage, tip credit, and who you treat as exempt or as a 1099.

We can review the form you already have, or shop a standalone EPLI quote.