Category: Complaint Process
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Complaint Process
If you believe you have been discriminated against because of race, color, national origin, age, disability, religion, or sex by a state and local social and health services agency, hospital, clinic, nursing home, or other HHS entity, you may file a complaint with OCR. Disability discrimination complaints may also be filed with OCR.
You may file electronically via the OCR Complaint Portal or use the Civil Rights Discrimination Complaint Form Package from OCR. You will need to save the PDF forms to your computer or other storage device. See full answer for instructions on filing a written complaint.
Complaints must be filed within 180 days from the date of the alleged discrimination. (The Office for Civil Rights may extend this period if there is good cause.)
You can file your complaint against an HHS entity via the OCR Complaint Portal, at OCRComplaint@hhs.gov, or you can mail or fax your complaint. See Filing a Complaint for more information.
Any individual or organization can file a civil rights complaint; you do not need to be the victim of discrimination in order to file a complaint, so long as the complaint is against an entity that is covered by one of the civil rights laws that OCR enforces and the complaint is on a basis covered by those laws, e.g., race, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation, and gender identity), age, or disability.