She had three agencies to choose from – and picked the only wrong one
Where your employees sit can decide whether a discrimination case is ever heard – or dies on a technicality.
A Pennsylvania appeals court made that point on May 29, 2026, tossing a worker's harassment and discrimination suit because she went to the wrong agency first.
Gabriella Liberatore worked from her Philadelphia home as a customer service representative for iSolutions Payments, an Indiana company with fewer than ten employees. She was its only Pennsylvania employee. The company ended her employment in April 2024.
Liberatore took her case to the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, the state's discrimination agency. She alleged that iSolutions discriminated against her based on sex, subjected her to a hostile work environment, and retaliated against her for protected activity. She also cross-filed with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Both agencies dismissed the complaint for lack of jurisdiction. The state agency said the company did not have four or more employees in Pennsylvania; the EEOC said it did not have fifteen or more. Neither agency ever weighed the merits of her claims.
A third door was open the whole time. The Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations enforces the city's Fair Practices Ordinance, which covers any employer with even one employee in Philadelphia. That plainly described iSolutions. It was the only agency that could actually investigate what Liberatore alleged. She never filed there.
After the two other agencies turned her away, she went straight to court under the city ordinance. iSolutions pushed back, arguing she had skipped a required step. Before suing, a worker generally has to exhaust administrative remedies – that is, let the right agency review the claim first. The trial court agreed and dismissed the case with prejudice. The Superior Court affirmed.
The reasoning was blunt. Filing with an agency that has no jurisdiction does not satisfy the exhaustion rule, because that agency can never bring its expertise to the claim. The whole point, the court said, is to give the right agency the first opportunity to investigate – and that purpose falls apart when someone files with an agency that has no authority over the case.
The court took care to set this apart from a recent decision, Jones v. Foods on First III Inc. Jones held that a worker need not file duplicate complaints with both the state and city agencies. But that rule only kicks in where both agencies actually have jurisdiction. Here, only the city commission did, and Liberatore never used it.
For HR leaders and employment lawyers, the lesson is about jurisdiction and headcount, not harassment law. Small-employer and remote-work arrangements can scramble which anti-discrimination law applies and which agency holds the authority to act. A state agency may have no jurisdiction over a small out-of-state employer even when a local ordinance clearly reaches it. The procedural path – which agency, which statute, which deadline – can decide a case before anyone looks at the facts.
It is a quiet but useful warning. The strength of a claim does not matter if it lands in the wrong forum. For employers, it underscores how much the where and the how-many shape exposure under overlapping federal, state, and city anti-discrimination regimes.
The case is Liberatore v. iSolutions Payments, 2026 PA Super 111, decided by the Superior Court of Pennsylvania on May 29, 2026.
