110
Opinion of the Court
oath or affirmation. On April 15, 1998, 313 days after the June 6, 1997, denial of tenure, the EEOC received the verified Form 5, which it forwarded to the College for response. After completing an investigation, the EEOC issued Edelman a notice of right to sue.
Edelman first sued in a Virginia state court on various state-law claims, but later added a cause of action under Title VII, 42 U. S. C. § 2000e-2(a)(1). The College then removed the case to Federal District Court and moved to dismiss, claiming that Edelman's failure to file the verified Form 5 with the EEOC within the applicable filing period was a bar to subject-matter jurisdiction. Edelman replied that his November 1997 letter was a timely filed charge and that under an EEOC regulation, 29 CFR § 1601.12(b) (1997),2 the verification on the Form 5 related back to the letter.
The District Court found, however, that the November letter was not a "charge" within the meaning of Title VII because neither Edelman nor the EEOC treated it as one, App. to Pet. for Cert. 22-24, with the consequence that there was no timely filing to which the verification on Form 5 could relate back. After finding no ground for equitable tolling of the filing requirements, the District Court dismissed the Title VII complaint and remanded the state-law claims. Id., at 24-25.
A divided panel of the Court of Appeals affirmed. 228 F. 3d 503, 512 (CA4 2000). The majority held that the plain language of the statute foreclosed the EEOC regulation
2 The regulation provides in relevant part that "a charge is sufficient when the Commission receives from the person making the charge a written statement sufficiently precise to identify the parties, and to describe generally the action or practices complained of. A charge may be amended to cure technical defects or omissions, including failure to verify the charge, or to clarify and amplify allegations made therein. Such amendments and amendments alleging additional acts which constitute unlawful employment practices related to or growing out of the subject matter of the original charge will relate back to the date the charge was first received."
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