Employment Law-EEOC Priorities (2018-2021)

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) is responsible for enforcing federal laws that make it illegal to discriminate against a job applicant or an employee because of the person’s race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, gender identity, and sexual orientation), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information. It is also illegal to discriminate against a person because the person complained about discrimination, filed a charge of discrimination, or participated in an employment discrimination investigation or lawsuit. Most employers with at least 15 employees are covered by EEOC laws (20 employees in age discrimination cases).

The EEOC’s priority focus, include:

Eliminating Barriers in Recruitment and Hiring      The primary focus will be on class-based recruitment and hiring practices that discriminate against racial, ethnic, and religious groups, older workers (over 40), women, and people with disabilities. Areas include exclusionary policies and practices, job segregation, channeling/steering of individuals into specific jobs due to their status in a particular group, restrictive application processes (including online systems that are inaccessible to individuals with disabilities), and screening tools that disproportionately impact workers based on their protected status (e.g., pre-employment tests, background checks impacting African Americans and Latinos, date-of-birth inquiries impacting older workers, and medical questionnaires impacting individuals with disabilities.

Addressing Selected Emerging and Developing Areas

  • Qualification standards and inflexible leave policies that discriminate against those with disabilities;
  • Accommodating pregnancy-related limitations under the ADAAA and Pregnancy Discrimination Act
  • Protecting lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgender (LGBT) people from discrimination based on sex;
  • Clarifying the employment relationship and the application of civil rights protections in light of increasing complexity of employment relationships and structures, including temporary workers, staffing agencies, and independent contractors.

Preserving Access to the Legal System      The EEOC will focus on policies and procedures that limit substantive rights, discourage or prohibit individuals from exercising their rights under employment discrimination statutes, or impede EEOC’s investigative or enforcement efforts. Specifically, the EEOC will focus on: 1) overly broad waivers, releases and mandatory arbitration provisions; 2) employers’ failure to maintain and retain applicant and employee data and records required by EEOC regulations; and 3) significant retaliatory practices that effectively dissuade others in the workplace from exercising their rights.