EEOC Releases New National Enforcement Plan

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) today approved a new National Enforcement Plan (NEP) for fiscal years 2025-2029.

The NEP replaces the agency’s fiscal year 2024-2028 Strategic Enforcement Plan. The NEP helps guide the EEOC’s work through all of the agency’s activities, including outreach, public education, technical assistance, enforcement, and litigation. It also reaffirms the agency’s three-pronged approach to eliminating discrimination in the workplace: prevention through education and outreach; the voluntary resolution of disputes, including through Alternative Dispute Resolution, pre-determination settlements, and conciliation agreements; and strong and evenhanded enforcement through litigation.

“The National Enforcement Plan reaffirms the agency’s unwavering commitment to merit-based, evenhanded enforcement of our nation’s civil rights laws,” said EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas. “By prioritizing intentional discrimination and underscoring that every worker must be treated as an individual under the law, this plan sharpens the agency’s focus on protecting equal opportunity for all Americans. It strategically directs enforcement resources toward the most serious and consequential unlawful employment practices to better safeguard workers’ civil rights nationwide.”

The NEP identifies several categories of substantive priorities, including cases that present a substantial likelihood of broader impact beyond the parties involved, including repeated, overt, or facially discriminatory policies, practices, and programs and intentional discrimination resulting from broad-based employment policies, programs, or practices; claims involving the application or scope of recent Supreme Court precedent or presenting unresolved issues of statutory interpretation; cases involving a conflict in the federal circuit courts; cases protecting vulnerable workers; cases involving the integrity or effectiveness of the Commission’s enforcement process, particularly the investigation and conciliation of charges; and a focus in the agency’s appellate program on cases where the agency can clarify the constitutional and statutory limitations regarding liability under the statutes it enforces in matters involving religious organizations and religious employers.

EEOC staff work on behalf of all American workers, and the NEP commits each EEOC component office to ensuring evenhanded enforcement of the civil rights laws enforced by the agency. The NEP will remain in effect until superseded, modified, or withdrawn by vote of a majority of the Commission.

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.