Workers would no longer face a 90-day limit to file certain harassment and discrimination lawsuits against employers under a bill that’s passed the Oregon Senate.

The change is troubling to lawmakers involved in the farm industry, who say it’ll create more uncertainty for agricultural operations that are already under regulatory strain.

“Employers, especially family farms with razor thin margins, cannot afford to live under the threat of litigation for years,” said Shelly Boshart Davis, R-Albany, whose family owns a farming and shipping business.

Currently, if Oregon’s Bureau of Labor and Industries investigates a harassment or discrimination complaint but takes no action against the employer, the worker has 90 days to file their own civil complaint.

House Bill 2957 would eliminate this time limit, allowing workers to file lawsuits for five years under the statute of limitations that would’ve applied if they hadn’t gone to BOLI. The bill has passed the Senate, 31-20, and has been referred to the House Labor and Business Committee.

Proponents say the bill is necessary because BOLI doesn’t have the resources to fully investigate and take action in all the cases brought to the agency, which means many are dismissed after one year regardless of merit.

Workers whose complaints are dismissed are then “left scrambling” to find an attorney and file a case within about three months, which is often too little time, said Rep. Travis Nelson, D-Portland, the bill’s chief sponsor.

“Nobody should be punished for seeking help from the state agency that is supposed to protect their rights,” Nelson said.

About 77% of the complaints made to BOLI are filed without the help of attorneys, who can be difficult to hire for workers who don’t speak English and have claims unlikely to result in large payouts, he said.

“Generally, we are not talking about people with access to legal teams or deep pockets here,” Nelson said.

Many workers seeking assistance from BOLI are unaware they may effectively forgo the usual five-year statute of limitations and be limited to 90 days to file a lawsuit, said Kate Suisman, an attorney for the Northwest Workers Justice Project nonprofit.

That shortened time frame is often insufficient for attorneys to properly investigate a worker’s allegations and draft a civil complaint, Suisman said.

“When someone calls and says they have a 90-day letter from BOLI, we basically tell them that won’t work on our timeline,” she said.

The bill’s critics point out that workers are not required to bring their complaints to BOLI immediately after an alleged incident of harassment or discrimination.

In other words, a worker could file a complaint with BOLI near the end of the normal five-year statute of limitations to file a lawsuit, after which the agency has a year to investigate before issuing a 90-day litigation notice, said Paloma Sparks, executive vice president of Oregon Business & Industry, which represents private companies.

“You actually got longer than the five-year statute of limitations” under those circumstances, she said.

If the problem is that BOLI is not able to fully investigate complaints, then lawmakers should focus on helping the agency do its job rather than eliminate the 90-day limit, said Rep. Anna Scharf, R-Amity, whose family runs a farming operation.

“The original law was working. It was working for employers. It was working for employees,” Scharf said.

Another provision in HB 2957 would prohibit employers from entering into agreements that limit a worker’s time to bring lawsuits in cases over which BOLI has jurisdiction.

That removes an incentive for employers to settle such cases and will make them more difficult to resolve out of court, contrary to the intention of BOLI procedures, said Rep. Kevin Mannix, R-Salem.

“The whole system was designed to prevent the need for litigation,” he said. “This bill encourages litigation.”