Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is a large federal agency that was established via the 1964 Civil Rights Act to administer and enforce civil rights laws against workplace discrimination.[3]:12,21 The EEOC investigates discrimination complaints based on an individual's race, color, national origin, religion, sex, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, and retaliation for reporting, participating in, and/or opposing a discriminatory practice.[4]

"EEOC" redirects here. For the EU legal certificate, see European Enforcement Order Certificate.
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
Agency overview
FormedJuly 2, 1965 (1965-07-02)
JurisdictionUnited States
HeadquartersWashington, D.C., U.S.
Employees1,968 (FY18)[1]
Annual budget$379,500,000 (FY18)[2]
Agency executives
  • Charlotte Burrows, Chair
  • Sharon Fast Gustafson, General Counsel
  • Jocelyn Samuels, Vice Chair
  • Janet Dhillon, Commissioner
  • Keith Sonderling, Commissioner
  • Andrea Lucas, Commissioner
Parent departmentIndependent Agency
Websitewww.eeoc.gov

The Commission also mediates and settles thousands of discrimination complaints each year prior to their investigation. The EEOC is also empowered to file civil discrimination suits against employers on behalf of alleged victims and to adjudicate claims of discrimination brought against federal agencies.[5][6]

History

On March 6, 1961, President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 10925, which required government contractors to "take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed and that employees are treated during employment without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin."[7] It established the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity, which then Vice President Lyndon Johnson was appointed to head. This was the forerunner of the EEOC.

The EEOC was established on July 2, 1965; its mandate is specified under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA),[8] the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, and the ADA Amendments Act of 2008. The EEOC's first complainants were female flight attendants.[9] However, the EEOC at first ignored sex discrimination complaints, and the prohibition against sex discrimination in employment went unenforced for the next few years.[10] One EEOC director called the prohibition "a fluke... conceived out of wedlock."[10]

In 2008, disability-based charges handled by the EEOC rose to a record 19,543, up 10.2 percent from the prior year and the highest level since 1995.[11] That may again be showing that because the EEOC has not adjusted many of their initial 1991 fines for inflation, the backlog of EEOC cases illustrates erosion of deterrence.

On March 27, 2010, President Obama made recess appointments of three Commission posts: Berrien, Feldblum, and Victoria Lipnic. With the appointments, the Commission had its full five Commissioners: Ishimaru, Berrien, Feldblum, Lipnic, and Constance Barker, who was confirmed by the Senate in 2008 to be a Commissioner. President Obama also made a recess appointment of P. David Lopez to be the EEOC's General Counsel.[12] On December 22, 2010, the Senate gave full confirmation to Berrien, Feldblum, Lipnic, and Lopez. In 2014, President Obama renominated Lopez and he was reconfirmed by the Senate the same year.[13]

In 2011, the Commission included "sex-stereotyping" of lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals, as a form of sex discrimination illegal under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.[14][15] In 2012, the Commission expanded protection provided by Title VII to transgender status and gender identity.[14][16] In 2015, it concluded that for Title VII, sex discrimination includes discrimination based on sexual orientation.[17][18] The Supreme Court upheld this position in R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2020.

Donald Trump named Janet Dhillon to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2019. The number of cases the EEOC pursued significantly dropped during her tenure, which former EEOC general counsel David Lopez compared to "a case of industry capture by the business community."[19] Dhillon chose to review cases herself before the commission would decide to vote on whether to take them, delaying the litigation process. The EEOC stopped pursuing cases of sexual orientation discrimination, even after Bostock v. Clayton County. Dhillon began a program that led to more cases going through mediation for settlement prior to becoming more comprehensive investigation or lawsuits. Staff at the EEOC was reduced to its lowest level since 1980.[19]

2012 profile

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) announced that it received 99,412 private sector workplace discrimination charges during fiscal year 2012, down slightly from the previous year. The year-end data also show that retaliation (37,836), race (33,512), and sex discrimination (30,356), which includes allegations of sexual harassment and pregnancy were the most frequently filed charges.[20]

Additionally, the EEOC achieved a second consecutive year of a significant reduction in the charge inventory, something not seen since fiscal year 2002. Due to a concerted effort, the EEOC reduced the pending inventory of private sector charges by 10 percent from fiscal year 2011, bringing the inventory level to 70,312. This inventory reduction is the second consecutive decrease of almost ten percent in charge inventory. Also this fiscal year, the agency obtained the largest amount of monetary recovery from private sector and state and local government employers through its administrative process — $365.4 million.

In fiscal year 2012, the EEOC filed 122 lawsuits, including 86 individual suits, 26 multiple-victim suits, with fewer than 20 victims, and 10 systemic suits. The EEOC's legal staff resolved 254 lawsuits for a total monetary recovery of $44.2 million.

EEOC also continued its emphasis on eliminating alleged systemic patterns of discrimination in the workplace. In fiscal year 2012, EEOC completed 240 systemic investigations which in part resulted in 46 settlements or conciliation agreements. These settlements, achieved without litigation, secured 36.2 million dollars for the victims of unlawful discrimination. In addition, the agency filed 12 systemic lawsuits in fiscal year 2012.

Overall, the agency secured both monetary and non-monetary benefits for more than 23,446 people through administrative enforcement activities – mediation, settlements, conciliations, and withdrawals with benefits. The number of charges resolved through successful conciliation, the last step in the EEOC administrative process prior to litigation, increased by 18 percent over 2011.

In September 2012, Home Depot agreed to pay $100,000 and furnish other relief to settle a disability discrimination lawsuit filed by the EEOC for the alleged failure to provide reasonable accommodation for a cashier with cancer at its Towson, Maryland, store and for later purportedly firing her because of her condition.[21]

Staffing, workload, and backlog

In 1975, when the backlog reached more than 100,000 charges to be investigated, President Gerald Ford's full requested budget of $62 million was approved. A "Backlog Unit" was created in Philadelphia in 1978 to resolve the thousands of federal equal employment complaints inherited from the Civil Service Commission. In 1980, Eleanor Holmes Norton began re-characterizing the backlog cases as "workload" in her reports to Congress, thus fulfilling her promise to eliminate the backlog.[22]

In June 2006, civil rights and labor union advocates publicly complained that the effectiveness of the EEOC was being undermined by budget and staff cuts and the outsourcing of complaint screening to a private contractor whose workers were poorly trained. In 2006, a partial budget freeze prevented the agency from filling vacant jobs, and its staff had shrunk by nearly 20 percent from 2001. A Bush administration official stated that the cuts had been made because it was necessary to direct more money to defense and homeland security.[23] By 2008, the EEOC had lost 25 percent of its staff over the previous eight years, including investigators and lawyers who handle the cases. The number of complaints to investigate grew to 95,400 in fiscal 2008, up 26 percent from 2006.[24]

Although full-time staffing of the EEOC was cut between 2002 and 2006, Congress increased the commission's budget during that period, as it has almost every year since 1980. The budget was $303 million in fiscal year 2001[2] to $327 million in fiscal year 2006.[24]

The outsourcing to Pearson Government Solutions in Kansas cost the agency $4.9 million and was called a "huge waste of money" by the president of the EEOC employees' union in 2006.[23]

The EEOC uses monetary fines as the primary form of deterrence and, as the fines have not adjusted for inflation, the backlog of EEOC cases illustrates a decline in its effectiveness.

Race and ethnicity

The EEOC requires employers to report various information about their employees, in particular their racial/ethnic categories, to prevent discrimination based on race/ethnicity. The definitions used in the report have been different at different times.

In 1997, the Office of Management and Budget gave a Federal Register Notice, the "Revisions to the Standards for the Classification of Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity," which defined new racial and ethnic definitions.[25] As of September 30, 2007, the EEOC's EEO-1 report must use the new racial and ethnic definitions in establishing grounds for racial or ethnic discrimination.[26] If an employee identifies their ethnicity as "Hispanic or Latino" as well as a race, the race is not reported in EEO-1, but it is kept as part of the employment record.

A person's skin color or physical appearance can also be grounds for a case of racial discrimination.[27][28] Discrimination based on national origin can be grounds for a case on discrimination as well.[29]

Investigative compliance policy

EEOC applies an investigative compliance policy when respondents are uncooperative in providing information during an investigation of a charge. If a respondent fails to turn over requested information, field offices are to subpoena the information, file a direct suit on the merits of a charge, or use the legal principle of adverse inference, which assumes the withheld information is against the respondent.[30]

Successes

On May 1, 2013, a Davenport, Iowa jury awarded the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commissission damages totaling $240 million — the largest verdict in the federal agency's history — for disability discrimination and severe abuse.[31] The jury agreed with the EEOC that Hill County Farms, doing business as Henry's Turkey Service subjected a group of 32 men with intellectual disabilities to severe abuse and discrimination for a period between 2007 and 2009, after 20 years of similar mistreatment.[31] This victory received international attention and was profiled in the New York Times.[32]

On June 1, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court held in an 8-1 decision written by Justice Antonin Scalia that an employer may not refuse to hire an applicant if the employer was motivated by avoiding the need to accommodate a religious practice. Such behavior violates the prohibition on religious discrimination contained in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.[33] EEOC General Counsel David Lopez hailed the decision. "At its root, this case is about defending the quintessentially American principles of religious freedom and tolerance," Lopez said. "This decision is a victory for our increasingly diverse society and we applaud Samantha Elauf's courage and tenacity in pursuing this matter.”[33]

Criticism

Some employment-law professionals criticized the agency after it issued advice that requiring a high school diploma from job applicants could violate the Americans with Disabilities Act. The advice letter stated that the longtime lowest common denominator of employee screening must be "job-related for the position in question and consistent with business necessity." A Ballard Spahr lawyer suggested, "There will be less incentive for the general public to obtain a high school diploma if many employers eliminate that requirement for job applicants in their workplace."[34]

The EEOC has been criticized for alleged heavy-handed tactics in their 1980 lawsuit against retailer Sears, Roebuck & Co. Based on a statistical analysis of personnel and promotions, EEOC argued that Sears both was systematically excluding women from high-earning positions in commission sales and was paying female management lower wages than male management. Sears, represented by lawyer Charles Morgan, Jr., counter-argued that the company had encouraged female applicants for sales and management, but women preferred lower-paying positions with more stable daytime working hours, as compared to commission sales, which demanded evening and weekend shifts and featured drastically-varying paychecks, depending on the numbers of sales in a given pay period. In 1986, the court ruled in favor of Sears on all counts and noted that the EEOC had neither produced a single witness who alleged discrimination nor identified any Sears policy that discriminated against women.[35][36]

In a 2011 ruling against the EEOC, Judge Loretta A. Preska declared that It relied too heavily on anecdotal claims rather than on hard data, in a lawsuit against Bloomberg, L.P. that alleged discrimination against pregnant employees. In a ruling described in the New York Times[37] as "strongly worded," Preska wrote, "the law does not mandate 'work-life balance' and added that while Bloomberg had expected high levels of dedication from employees, the company did not treat women who took pregnancy leave differently from those who took leave for other reasons.

During the Trump administration, the EEOC came under criticism for being ineffective.[38][39] A review of enforcement data has shown that less than 3% of complainants prevail when they file an EEOC charge.[40] More, the agency has had the same budget for over 40 years, when adjusted for inflation.[41] The stagnant budget allocated to the EEOC by Congress has forced it to downsize, cutting its original staffing levels by over 60%. Innovations in workplace management from forced employment arbitration agreements to the growing use of employer practices liability insurance (EPLI) policies [42] has rendered the EEOC an obsolete enforcement agency, in the eyes of many.

Commissioners

All Commission seats and the post of general counsel to the commission are filled by the US President, subject to confirmation by the Senate.[43]

Current
Name Title Party Took office Term expires
Charlotte A. Burrows Chair Democratic September 12, 2014 July 1, 2023
Jocelyn Samuels Vice chair Democratic October 11, 2020 July 1, 2021
Janet Dhillon Commissioner Republican May 15, 2019 July 1, 2022
Keith Sonderling Commissioner Republican September 30, 2020 July 1, 2024
Andrea R. Lucas Commissioner Republican October 23, 2020 July 1, 2025

Former

Chairs
No. Chair of the EEOC Photo Start of term End of term President(s)
1 Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. May 26, 1965 May 11, 1966 Lyndon Johnson
2 Stephen N. Shulman September 14, 1966 July 1, 1967
3 Clifford Alexander Jr. August 4, 1967 May 1, 1969
4 William H. Brown III May 5, 1969 December 23, 1973 Richard Nixon
5 John H. Powell Jr. December 28, 1973 March 18, 1975
Acting Ethel Bent Walsh 1975 Gerald Ford
6 Lowell W. Perry May 27, 1975 May 15, 1976
Acting Ethel Bent Walsh May 1976 May 1977
7 Eleanor Holmes Norton May 27, 1977 February 21, 1981 Jimmy Carter

Ronald Reagan

Acting J. Clay Smith Jr. 1981 1982 Ronald Reagan
8 Clarence Thomas May 6, 1982 March 8, 1990 Ronald Reagan
George H. W. Bush
9 Evan J. Kemp Jr. March 8, 1990 April 2, 1993 George H. W. Bush

Bill Clinton

Acting Tony Gallegos 1993 1994 Bill Clinton
10 Gilbert Casellas September 29, 1994 December 31, 1997
Acting Paul Igasaki 1998
11 Ida L. Castro October 23, 1998 August 13, 2001
12 Cari M. Dominguez August 6, 2001 August 31, 2006 George W. Bush
13 Naomi C. Earp September 1, 2006 2009
Acting Stuart J. Ishimaru January 20, 2009 April 7, 2010 Barack Obama
14 Jacqueline A. Berrien[45] April 7, 2010[46] September 2, 2014
15 Jenny R. Yang September 2, 2014[47] January 22, 2017
Acting Victoria Lipnic January 25, 2017[48] May 15, 2019 Donald Trump
16 Janet Dhillon May 15, 2019 January 20 2021
17 Charlotte Burrows January 21, 2021 Present Joe Biden

General Counsels
  • Charles T. Duncan, 1965-1966
  • Richard Berg (Acting), 1966-1967
  • Kenneth Holbert (Acting), 1967
  • Daniel Steiner, 1967-1969
  • Russell Spector (Acting), 1969
  • Stanley P. Herbert, 1969-1971
  • Jack Pemberton, 1971-1972
  • William Carey, 1972-1975
  • Julia Cooper (Acting), 1975
  • Abner Sibal, 1975-1978
  • Charles A. Shanor, 1987-1990
  • Donald Livingston, 1990-1993
  • Clifford Gregory Stewart, 1995-2000
  • Eric Dreiband, 2003-2005
  • Ronald S. Cooper, 2006-2009
  • David Lopez, 2010-2016
  • Sharon Fast Gustafson, 2019-present

See also

References
  1. "FedScope - Employment Cubes (Enhanced Interface)". www.fedscope.opm.gov.
  2. "EEOC Budget and Staffing History". Archives. EEOC.gov. May 12, 2009. Archived from the original on December 9, 2009.
  3. Van Loo, Rory (2018-08-01). "Regulatory Monitors: Policing Firms in the Compliance Era". Faculty Scholarship.
  4. "Types of Discrimination".
  5. See "42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2 – Unlawful Employment Practices". and "42 U.S.C. § 2000e-3 – Other Unlawful Practices".
  6. In addition, the EEOC, the Departments of Labor and Justice, the Civil Service Commission and the Office of Revenue Sharing have adopted Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures to assist employers in complying with federal laws prohibiting employment discrimination."Uniform Guidelines On Employee Selection Procedures". Retrieved February 2, 2010.
  7. States, President of the United. Executive Order 10925.
  8. 29 U.S.C. 621 et seq., as amended
  9. Collins, Gail (14 October 2009). When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present. Little, Brown. pp. 59–. ISBN 978-0-316-07166-6.
  10. Friedman, Barry (September 29, 2009). The Will of the People: How Public Opinion Has Influenced the Supreme Court and Shaped the Meaning of the Constitution. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. p. 290. ISBN 9780374220341. Retrieved June 29, 2011.
  11. "Ability Magazine: BAD BOYS – EEOC Tackles Job Discrimination" (2009)". Retrieved 2012-04-05.
  12. "President Obama Announces Recess Appointments to Key Administration Positions | The White House". Whitehouse.gov. 2010-03-27. Archived from the original on 2013-10-22. Retrieved 2013-10-06.
  13. "EEOC General Counsel David Lopez to Depart Agency". www.eeoc.gov.
  14. "Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation, Status as a Parent, Marital Status and Political Affiliation". Retrieved February 18, 2013.
  15. "EEOC Request No. 0520110649". Retrieved February 18, 2013.
  16. "Macy v. Department of Justice, EEOC Appeal No. 0120120821". Retrieved February 28, 2013.
  17. Carpenter, Dale (2012-12-14). "Anti-gay discrimination is sex discrimination, says the EEOC". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2015-07-17.
  18. Tatectate, Curtis. "EEOC: Federal law bans workplace bias against gays, lesbians, bisexuals | Miami Herald Miami Herald". Miamiherald.com. Retrieved 2015-07-17.
  19. Covert, Bryce (2021-01-23). "The Trump Administration Gutted the EEOC". ISSN 0027-8378. Retrieved 2021-01-28.
  20. "Enforcement and Litigation Statistics". Retrieved 2013-01-30.
  21. "Home Depot to Pay $100,000 to Settle EEOC Disability Discrimination Suit". The National Law Review. U.S Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. 2012-09-10. Retrieved September 23, 2012.
  22. "Enforcing the Civil Rights Act: Fighting Racism, Sexism and the Ku Klux Klan. The Story of the Miami EEOC's First Class Action Trial." James Keeney, 2012 Civil Rights Publishing, Sarasota, FL
  23. Lee, Christopher (June 14, 2006). "EEOC Is Hobbled, Groups Contend: Case Backlog Grows as Its Staff Is Slashed, Critics Say". Washington Post.
  24. Vogel, Steve (March 31, 2009). "EEOC Willfully Violated Pay Law, Arbitrator Rules". Washington Post. p. A15.
  25. "Revisions to the Standards for the Classification of Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity".
  26. Final Revisions of the Employer Information Report (EEO-1) Archived August 13, 2009, at the Wayback Machine by the EEOC. The page contains links to FAQs, forms and instructions
  27. The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. "Race/Color Discrimination." August 15, 2007. "We may use this for the purpose of race and ethnicity.""Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2009-08-12. Retrieved 2013-10-01.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  28. Kalev, Alexandra; Dobbin, Frank; Kelly, Erin (2006-08-01). "Best Practices or Best Guesses? Assessing the Efficacy of Corporate Affirmative Action and Diversity Policies". American Sociological Review. 71 (4): 589–617. doi:10.1177/000312240607100404. ISSN 0003-1224. S2CID 10327121.
  29. The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. "National Origin Discrimination." August 15, 2007. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2009-08-12. Retrieved 2013-10-01.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  30. AAjing
  31. "Jury Awards $240 Million for Long-Term Abuse of Workers with Intellectual Disabilities". U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. 1 May 2013. Retrieved 29 April 2018. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
  32. Barry, Dan (8 March 2014). "The 'Boys' in the Bunkhouse" – via NYTimes.com.
  33. "Supreme Court Rules in Favor of EEOC in Abercrombie Religious Discrimination Case". U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. 1 June 2015. Retrieved 29 April 2018. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
  34. Dave Boyer (1 January 2012). "EEOC: High school diploma requirement might violate Americans with Disabilities Act". Washington Times.
  35. EEOC v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 628 F. Supp. 1264 (N.D. Ill. 1986) (Sears II).
  36. Possley, Maurice (1986). Sears Wins 12-year Fight Over Bias Chicago Tribune 4 February 1986. Retrieved 2012-12-10.
  37. Chen, David W. (17 August 2011). "Discrimination Suit Against Bloomberg L.P. Is Dismissed" – via www.nytimes.com.
  38. "Workplace discrimination is illegal. But our data shows it's still a huge problem". February 28, 2019 – via vox.com.
  39. "A Comparative Analysis of Employment Discrimination Case Outcomes". June 20, 2019. SSRN 3404236. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  40. "The Value of the EEOC". 1996. S2CID 9551182. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  41. "EEOC Budget and Staffing Levels" – via eeoc.gov.
  42. "Are EPLI Policies a License to Discriminate - Or Are They a Necessary Reality Check for Employers" – via heinonline.org.
  43. "42 U.S.C. § 2000e-4 – Equal Employment Opportunity Commission".
  44. Press Office (September 14, 2009). "President Obama Announces More Key Administration Posts". Archived from the original on February 3, 2010.
  45. Press Office (July 16, 2009). "President Obama Announces Pick to Head Equal Employment Opportunity Commission". Archived from the original on February 6, 2010.
  46. "Jacqueline A. Berrien Becomes Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission". U.S. Senate Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. 2010-04-07. Retrieved 2010-11-16.
  47. "President Appoints Jenny R. Yang EEOC Chair". Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Retrieved 2014-09-19.
  48. "Victoria Lipnic, Acting Chair". www.eeoc.gov. Retrieved 2017-08-02.
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