EEOC Delivers on Administration Priorities and President Trump’s Executive Orders

WASHINGTON – Over the past 15 months of the second Trump Administration, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) under the leadership of Chair Andrea Lucas has undertaken exhaustive efforts to restore evenhanded enforcement of employment civil rights laws on behalf of all Americans, including by delivering on Administration civil rights enforcement priorities and implementing key deliverables entrusted to the EEOC in 11 different Executive Orders.[i]

The majority of the EEOC’s law enforcement work is confidential and remains so prior to a public settlement or filing of a legal action. While confidentiality requirements limit our ability to share the full scope of our activities, the agency is working tirelessly to ensure equal opportunity for American workers. To date, the EEOC has taken the following public actions:

EEOC Protects Religious Freedom

• Since January 2025, the EEOC has filed 16 religious discrimination lawsuits and recovered over $63 million on behalf of religious workers via public and private pre-litigation voluntary resolutions, as well as litigation settlements. In FY 2025 alone, the agency obtained record-breaking recoveries for religious workers (over $48 million), which was a 146% increase over the $19.55 million recovered in FY 2024.
• Under Executive Order 14202 (Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias), Chair Lucas is a named member of the Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias.
  • In April 2025, Chair Lucas participated in the first meeting of the Task Force.
  • In April 2026, the Task Force published a report detailing how the Biden Administration’s prosecutions, policies, and practices demonstrated anti-Christian bias throughout the federal government, in accordance with Executive Order 14202. The EEOC worked closely with the Department of Justice to advance this significant effort, with a section of the report spotlighting the EEOC’s findings and work as part of this effort.
• In March 2026, the EEOC settled a $15 million public conciliation on behalf of dozens of (largely Christian) workers who were denied religious accommodations from COVID vaccine mandates, our largest publicly announced conciliation resolution in this space. The EEOC’s settlement is one of the largest public COVID vaccine mandate settlements obtained by any party, including private litigants.
  • In addition, as detailed further below, since January 2025, EEOC has filed 4 lawsuits alleging religious discrimination and accommodation claims related to COVID vaccine mandates, in addition to resolving multiple large-scale public conciliations and pre-litigation settlements for a total of nearly $19 million.
• Executive Order 14188 (Additional Measures To Combat Anti-Semitism) proclaimed that it is the policy of the United States to combat anti-Semitism vigorously, using all available and appropriate legal tools, to prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence. In its enforcement of religious anti-discrimination protections, the EEOC plays an important role in this effort.
• Consistent with Executive Order 14188, in July 2025 the EEOC obtained a $21 million class settlement from Columbia University to resolve EEOC charges alleging antisemitic harassment, including a Commissioner’s Charge brought by Chair Lucas on behalf of a class of Jewish employees.
  • This resolution represents the largest EEOC public settlement in nearly 20 years for any form of discrimination or harassment.
  • In addition, in the EEOC’s 60-year history, this is both the largest EEOC settlement for victims of antisemitism to date, as well as the most significant EEOC settlement for workers of any faith or religion.
• In March 2026, the EEOC won a subpoena enforcement action against the University of Pennsylvania that the agency had filed in November 2025 as part of an antisemitism investigation arising out of a Commissioner’s Charge filed by Chair Lucas in December 2023. Implementation of the court’s order in the agency’s favor has been stayed pending the university’s appeal.
• In May 2026, the EEOC settled a lawsuit against Menzies Aviation for $55,000 for failure to accommodate an employee’s sincerely held religious beliefs which precluded her from working during her Sabbath observance.
• In April 2026, the EEOC sued Blue Eagle Contracting, a bulk mail delivery contractor, for failing to accommodate a Christian truck driver who sought accommodations to attend religious services.
• In March 2026, the EEOC sued The Cogar Group, a security services company, for failing to accommodate a Christian security guard who sought accommodations to attend religious services.
• In March 2026, the EEOC sued Silver Cross Hospital for failing to accommodate a Christian surgical technologist who sought accommodations from a COVID vaccine mandate.
• In March 2026, the EEOC sued Dollar General for demoting a Jewish assistant store manager because of his Sabbath observance.
• In March 2026, the EEOC reached a $100,000 public conciliation with YHMA, a youth organization, in a religious discrimination and retaliation charge.
• In March 2026, the EEOC settled a lawsuit against Rex Healthcare for $150,000 involving failure to accommodate a religious employee who sought accommodations from a COVID vaccine mandate.
• In February 2026, the EEOC sued Hotel Equities Group, a hotel management company, for failing to accommodate religious and pregnancy accommodations for two employees.
• In December 2025, the EEOC sued Advocate Aurora Health, an Illinois-based hospital system for failing to accommodate and firing a religious employee who sought accommodations from a COVID vaccine mandate.
• In December 2025, the EEOC reached an over-$300,000 public conciliation with Mavis Tire to resolve a charge of religious discrimination alleging failure to hire an applicant for a managerial position because of his request for a reasonable accommodation to observe the Sabbath, and retracting an offer for a lower position with a more flexible schedule after the applicant reiterated his request for a religious accommodation.
• In December 2025, the EEOC settled for $175,000 a religious discrimination lawsuit against timeshare companies under the Marriott corporate umbrella the agency filed in May 2025. The lawsuit alleged Marriott failed to accommodate a sales executive’s request to observe the Sabbath in accordance with her faith in violation of Title VII, forcing her to choose between showing up for work or adhering to her religious practice, and leading her to resign.
• In September 2025, the EEOC reached an over $2.8 million public conciliation with UT-Battelle to resolve multiple EEOC charges, including a Commissioner’s Charge filed by Chair Lucas on behalf of a class of employees, alleging UT-Battelle denied a class of employees religious accommodations relating to the employer’s COVID vaccine mandate.
• In September 2025, the EEOC sued Apple for failing to accommodate and firing a religious employee for his request to observe the Sabbath.
• In September 2025, the EEOC reached a $80,000 public conciliation with P.F. Chang’s to resolve an EEOC charge alleging P.F. Chang’s did not hire the applicant because of his request for a religious accommodation of Sundays off to observe his religious beliefs.
• In August 2025, the EEOC settled a religious discrimination lawsuit against Buffalo Wild Wings for $47,500, in which an applicant was not hired because she wore long skirts when in public based on her sincerely held religious beliefs, the general manager mocked the applicant’s religious beliefs and failed to interview her or otherwise contact her regarding the open position, and an assistant manager said the restaurant would not hire her because it was unusual for servers to wear long skirts in a sports bar.
• In August 2025, the EEOC reached a $1 million public conciliation with Mercyhealth. The conciliation followed a class-wide cause finding that the healthcare system failed to grant its employees religious accommodations to the employer’s vaccine mandate, instead terminating employees or withholding pay. In addition to recovering substantial monetary compensation for a class of employees, the EEOC also secured an important commitment that Mercyhealth would offer to reinstate employees terminated for refusing to comply with the organization’s COVID-19 vaccine policy.
• In August 2025, the EEOC filed two lawsuits against Silver Cross Hospital for denying religious and disability-based COVID-19 vaccine exemptions.
• In August 2025, the EEOC secured a $61,000 public conciliation with The Teeth Doctors, a North Carolina dental clinic, for firing an employee over her request to wear a scrub skirt for religious reasons, with the agreement requiring policy changes and supervisor training on religious accommodations.
• In August 2025, the EEOC settled a lawsuit with Logic Staffing, for $217,500, for failure to hire a Muslim job applicant after he asked for an accommodation to attend Friday prayer. The company also disqualified him from consideration for future employment after he sought confirmation that he wasn’t hired because he asked for the accommodation.
• In August 2025, the EEOC announced noteworthy decisions on two religious discrimination appeals, protecting religious liberties for the federal workforce.
• In July 2025, the EEOC settled for $850,000 a religious discrimination lawsuit against the Venetian Resort Las Vegas alleging that the Venetian denied religious accommodations to employees of various faiths and retaliated against those who opposed the discrimination, leading to discipline, lost promotions, and termination or constructive discharge.
• In July 2025, the EEOC filed a lawsuit against Mayo Clinic for allegedly violating Title VII by refusing a security guard’s request for a religious accommodation to its COVID-19 vaccination policy.
• In July 2025, the EEOC settled COVID-19 vaccine-related conciliations with Aria and Luxor, two resorts on the Las Vegas Strip. Each company agreed to provide Title VII training to its human resources department, with a specific focus on religious accommodations.
• In July 2025, the EEOC sued FCA for failing to accommodate a Jewish employee’s request to observe the Sabbath and take unpaid leave for Passover.
• In July 2025, the EEOC sued The Rock Snowpark after an employee was fired over faith-based social media posts which made no mention of the workplace or coworkers.
• In June 2025, the EEOC filed a lawsuit against CEMEX Construction Materials Florida after the company failed to accommodate a mixture truck driver’s religion-based request to wear a skirt.
• In June 2025, the EEOC sued Omni Hotels for failing to accommodate a religious worker’s request not to work on Sundays.
• In May 2025, the EEOC settled a COVID-19 vaccine religious accommodation charge against Infinity Rehab for both monetary and injunctive relief.
• In April 2025, the EEOC settled a religious harassment, retaliation, and constructive discharge lawsuit against Chipotle.

EEOC Attacks DEI-Related Race and Sex Discrimination

• In May 2026, the EEOC sued The New York Times for engaging in DEI-related race and sex discrimination in promotion against a white male employee.
• In April 2026, the EEOC obtained an approximately $500,000 settlement of a lawsuit against HCL America on behalf of an Asian male applicant, in which the company rejected the applicant as not “diverse” and “too old”. The lawsuit alleged the company instructed its recruiter to identify diverse candidates for the position, discussed goals to identify candidates based on gender and ethnicity, and noted its willingness to dispense with some of the relevant qualifications, including sales or IT experience, depending on a candidate’s protected characteristics.
• In March 2026, the EEOC settled a $500,000 public conciliation with Planned Parenthood of Illinois on behalf of a small class of white employees arising out of Planned Parenthood’s DEI practices. According to the agency’s reasonable cause findings, Planned Parenthood segregated employees by race during mandatory weekly racial affinity caucus meetings; subjected white employees to harassment, including via DEI trainings; and engaged in disparate treatment against white employees regarding terms, conditions, and privileges of employment.
• In February 2026, the EEOC filed a subpoena enforcement action in federal court against NIKE, arising out of an investigation into a Commissioner Charge filed by Chair Lucas on behalf of a class of white employees alleging systemic race discrimination including via NIKE’s DEI programs.
• In February 2026, the EEOC sued Coca-Cola Beverages Northeast for excluding male employees from an employer-sponsored event based on sex.
• In February 2026, Chair Lucas issued a reminder letter to Fortune 500 chief executive officers, general counsel, and board chairs regarding Title VII compliance related to DEI initiatives.
• In February 2026, the EEOC settled a lawsuit against Kickback Jack’s for $1.1 million for refusing to hire male applicants.
• In November 2025, the EEOC filed a subpoena enforcement action in federal court against financial services giant Northwestern Mutual over allegations of DEI-related race, sex, color, and national origin discrimination arising from an individual employee’s EEOC charge.
• In May 2025, Chair Lucas reminded hundreds of thousands of employers of their obligations not to use demographic data collected for annual EEO-1 reporting to the EEOC to discriminate against employees based on race or other protected characteristics.
• In March 2025, the EEOC rooted out DEI-related discrimination practices in our nation’s elite law firms, securing major commitments to merit-based employment practices in EEOC settlements with six of the nation’s largest law firms, in conjunction with concurrent $700 million settlements by those firms with President Trump.
• In March 2025, the EEOC unveiled comprehensive resource materials to help workers and employers understand, identify, and report DEI-related race and sex discrimination.
• In June 2025, in Ames v. Ohio Dep’t of Youth Servs., (605 U.S. 303 (2025)), the Supreme Court unanimously held that the Sixth Circuit’s “background circumstances” rule is inconsistent with Title VII’s text and the Court’s longstanding precedents construing the statute. In doing so, the Court agreed with the Solicitor General — appearing on behalf of the United States and the EEOC — that 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a)(1) applies equally to discrimination against any individual, whether a member of a minority or majority group, and that the McDonnell Douglas framework’s evidentiary standards do not vary depending on a plaintiff’s race, sex, or other protected characteristics. As acknowledged in the Court’s opinion, the EEOC has consistently taken this colorblind, group-neutral position for at least 50 years.

EEOC Protects American Workers From Anti-American Bias Involving Preferences for Foreign Workers

• In December 2025, the EEOC won a federal subpoena enforcement action in federal court against Vallarta Food Enterprises, after the agency filed the action in July 2025. The subpoena enforcement action arose from an ongoing systemic investigation that Vallarta failed or refused to recruit, hire, or promote individuals based on their race (white, black, and/or Asian) and national origin (non-Hispanic).
• In December 2025, the EEOC sued United Pride Dairy for unlawful treatment of three workers. Among other facts, the case involved the employer’s preference for foreign workers, with a manager at United Pride Dairy saying “Americans are lazy.”
• In November 2025, the EEOC released new and updated educational materials on national origin discrimination, including anti-American national origin discrimination.
• In November 2025, the EEOC and DOL highlighted their partnership in Project Firewall to combat illegal national origin discrimination against American workers.
• In November 2025, the EEOC settled for $150,000 a race and national origin lawsuit on behalf of black workers of American national origin against Seward and Son.
• In February 2025, Chair Lucas announced she would be prioritizing enforcement against unlawful national original discrimination against American workers in favor of foreign workers, in cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Labor, and DOJ.
• In February 2025, the EEOC settled for $1.4 million a foreign-preference national origin discrimination lawsuit against LeoPalace, a major hotel and resort in Guam on behalf of non-Japanese employees, including multiple former employees of American national origin.

EEOC Defends Women’s Sex-Based Rights at Work

• In February 2026, the EEOC issued a federal sector appellate decision recognizing the ability of federal agencies to designate intimate spaces in federal workplaces by sex. The EEOC held that “Title VII permits a federal agency employer to maintain single-sex bathrooms and similar intimate spaces,” and that Title VII “permits a federal agency employer to exclude employees, including trans-identifying employees, from opposite-sex facilities.”
• In January 2026, soon after the agency’s restored quorum, the EEOC voted to rescind its 2024 Enforcement Guidance on Harassment in the Workplace, a policy document which previously had taken the enforcement position that harassing conduct under Title VII includes “denial of access to a bathroom or other sex-segregated facility consistent with [an] individual’s gender identity;” and that harassing conduct includes “repeated and intentional use of a name or pronoun inconsistent with [an] individual’s known gender identity.”
• In January 2025, the EEOC removed gender ideology from within the EEOC and restored its adherence to the binary and biological reality of sex in order to protect women’s rights in the workplace.

EEOC Initiated Significant Work to Reform the EEO Complaint Process for Federal Employees

• EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas is reforming the agency’s federal sector program, including through a series of course-correcting memoranda to make the EEOC more accountable.
• The first memorandum, “Ending Unauthorized Monetary Sanctions Against Federal Agencies,” corrects the EEOC’s previous rejection of binding authority by the Department of Justice (DOJ); reaffirms that DOJ’s OLC opinions constitute controlling legal advice to Executive Branch officials; and ends the EEOC’s practice of imposing monetary sanctions against federal agency employers during the federal sector EEO complaint process.
• The second memorandum, “Restoring and Protecting the Presumption of Innocence in the EEO Complaint Process,” reaffirms the commonsense proposition that everyone is innocent until proven guilty and reminds all federal agency employers that they should give federal sector EEO defendants a full and fair chance to clear their names.

These wins represent only a small fraction of work being done to ensure equal opportunity, merit, and colorblind equality for all of America’s workers to protect them from discrimination and harm in the workplace. While the majority of the EEOC’s law enforcement work is confidential and remains so prior to a public settlement or filing of a legal action, rest assured, across the nation, dedicated members of the EEOC staff are advancing the Trump Administration’s critical civil rights agenda and securing valuable wins for the American worker.

“As these wins demonstrate, under the Trump Administration, we will not stand idle in the face of employer practices that erode the livelihoods, dignity, and fundamental rights of American workers,” Lucas said. “The EEOC will move forward with unwavering resolve. This is our charge, and we will meet it — defending justice, protecting individual rights, and upholding the American promise of colorblind equality under the law.”

The EEOC is the sole federal agency authorized to investigate and litigate against businesses and other private sector employers for violations of federal laws prohibiting employment discrimination. For public sector employers, the EEOC shares jurisdiction with the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. The EEOC also is responsible for coordinating the federal government’s employment antidiscrimination effort. More information about the EEOC is available at www.eeoc.gov.

[i] Executive Order 14148: Initial Rescissions of Harmful Executive Orders and Actions; Executive Order 14151: Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing; Executive Order 14168: Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism And Restoring Biological Truth To The Federal Government; Executive Order 14173: Ending Illegal Discrimination And Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity; Executive Order 14188: Additional Measures To Combat Anti-Semitism; Executive Order 14202: Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias; Executive Order 14230: Addressing Risks from Perkins Coie LLP; Executive Order 14237: Addressing Risks From Paul Weiss; Executive Order 14250: Addressing Risks From WilmerHale; Executive Order 14281: Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy; Executive Order 14398: Addressing DEI Discrimination by Federal Contractors.