The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has filed only 16 lawsuits so far in 2025, far below the 36 filed at this time last year. Of the 16 lawsuits, six are sexual harassment, three are religious discrimination, three are disability discrimination, two pregnancy discrimination, and one each are age discrimination and national origin discrimination.
At the end of June, however, the EEOC filed a flurry of new cases that primarily focus on sexual harassment, disability discrimination, and failure to accommodate. Once Acting Chair Andrea Lucas gets a quorum with the expected addition of Brittany Bull Panuccio, she is expected to take aim at religious and anti-American discrimination and cut back protections for trans and nonbinary workers.
When the Supreme Court announced its recent decision in Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services, Lucas made it clear she will also be targeting employer diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs. In her statement applauding the decision, she said the EEOC under her leadership “is committed to dismantling identity politics that have plagued our employment civil rights laws, by dispelling the notion that only the ‘right sort of’ [employee] is protected by Title VII.” The commission is also expected to revise its Pregnant Workers Fairness Act regulations and make revisions to its harassment guidance.
EEOC Will Begin Processing Some Transgender Cases
After dropping a number of transgender cases based on President Trump’s Executive Order 14168 on two genders, EEOC employees were told on July 1 to continue processing charges that “fall squarely under” the Supreme Court’s Bostock v. Clayton County decision. The agency had been effectively stalling transgender discrimination charges but will now process transgender charges that involve hiring, discharges, or promotions. The Trump administration has taken the position that Bostock does not interpret Title VII of the Civil Rights Act to extend protections for gender identity-based harassment or claims of biased conduct like misgendering or limiting workers’ access to facilities that match their gender identity.
Dems Question EEOC’s “Shakedown” of Law Firms
House and Senate Democratic leaders have sent a letter asking Acting Chair Lucas to provide them with “answers about [the EEOC’s] role in abetting the Trump Administration’s coercing major law firms into providing nearly $1 billion in pro-bono legal services to causes approved by President Trump.” The Democrats are seeking information on what they describe as “sham EEOC investigations” that “the White House used to threaten and extort law firms into providing free legal services to the President’s allies.” The EEOC said that it has received and is reviewing the letter.
Administration Argues Samuels Not Protected from Firing
The Trump administration is arguing former EEOC Vice Chair Jocelyn Samuels does not have standing to challenge her firing by President Trump under Title VII. The Department of Justice (DOJ) asked the federal district court in D.C. to dismiss Samuels’ complaint over her firing. The DOJ claims President Trump acted within his statutory and constitutional authority after he removed her and former Chair Charlotte Burrows after they and Commissioner Kalpana Kotagal spoke out against Trump’s Executive Orders that they said threatened the agency’s work.
Major Settlements in 2025
Waste Pro of Florida agreed to pay $1.4 million to settle a race and national origin discrimination lawsuit filed by the EEOC. According to the lawsuit, Waste Pro subjected 26 Black and/or Haitian-American workers to frequent, severe harassment because of their race and national origin. The three-year decree requires the company to provide specialized training on race discrimination to its CEO and HR employees to ensure they are aware of their obligations to prevent workplace discrimination and how to address complaints; to appoint an outside compliance officer to oversee the investigation of any race discrimination complaints; to conduct exit interviews; to draft a written seniority system for the assignment of trucks and routes on a race-neutral basis; and to establish a centralized, statewide discrimination complaint tracking system.
Security Engineers, Inc.—a contract security solutions provider headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama—will pay $1.6 million to settle a sex discrimination lawsuit filed by the EEOC. In its lawsuit, the EEOC charged that Security Engineers engaged in sex discrimination throughout Alabama when it denied security officer jobs and assignments to a class of women, beginning in at least 2017. The decree prohibits Security Engineers from discriminating based on sex, including prohibiting the company from complying with discriminatory client requests. The company must delete all directives not to select, assign, or hire women because of sex, and the decree provides for training, monitoring, and reporting.
Happy 60th Birthday, EEOC!
H. Juanita Beecher is an attorney with FortneyScott in Washington, D.C. You can reach her at nbeecher@fortneyscott.com.