On April 6, 2026, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission released its combined FY 2027 Agency Performance Plan and FY 2025 Agency Performance Report, alongside the Office of General Counsel’s separate FY 2026 Annual Report on the agency’s litigation program. Together, these documents provide the most comprehensive public accounting to date of the EEOC’s enforcement activity during the first year of the second Trump administration. The reports reveal an agency that is simultaneously leaner, more aggressive, and more ideologically focused than at any time in recent memory.

The headline number is significant: $660 million recovered for 17,680 victims of employment discrimination across private, state and local government, and federal workplaces. Of that total, $528 million came through the agency’s pre-litigation enforcement process alone, which the EEOC describes as the highest pre-litigation recovery in its 60-year history. But the real story is not the aggregate dollar figure, which is actually down approximately $40 million from FY 2024’s nearly $700 million total. The real story is where those dollars come from, what enforcement theories drove them, and what it signals about the trajectory of federal workplace discrimination enforcement going forward.

The Agency Is Doing More With Less

The EEOC began FY 2026 with 1,809 employees, down from 2,170 at the start of FY 2025. Field attorneys declined from 186 to 159. The litigation support budget was cut from $3.48 million to $2.01 million. Merits suits filings dropped to 94, one of the quietest filing years in the past decade. For much of FY 2025, the agency lacked a three-member quorum to authorize new systemic litigation.

Despite these constraints, the agency increased charge resolution by 4.4%, reduced federal sector appellate resolutions by 67%, and resolved systemic investigations at a rate of 20% higher than FY 2024 while more than doubling the monetary from those investigations. The EEOC also achieved a 96.5% favorable resolution rate in litigation and a 100% success rate in systemic lawsuit resolutions.

The instinctive reaction of many employers will be to view the staffing reductions as evidence of a weakened enforcement agency. That reaction is both understandable and mistaken. What the data actually shows is an agency that has traded volume for precision, concentrating its diminished resources on high-impact matters that generate outsized recoveries and establish enforcement precedent aligned with Administration priorities.

Four Priority Enforcement Areas Employers Must Watch

The FY 2025 report makes the agency’s enforcement priorities explicit. Chair Andrea Lucas has organized the EEOC’s agenda around four pillars, each of which produced concrete enforcement results during the fiscal year.

1. DEI-Related Discrimination

The EEOC secured settlements with six major law firms over diversity initiatives and obtained a $21 million settlement with Columbia University to resolve antisemitism charges, the largest discrimination settlement in the agency’s history. The agency published joint technical assistance documents with the DOJ to define what it considers unlawful DEI-related workplace discrimination. Subpoena enforcement actions filed during this fiscal year revealed active pattern-or-practice investigations into Nike and Northwestern Mutual over their diversity programs. The EEOC’s FY 2027 performance plan indicates that this will remain a central enforcement priority. Employers maintaining DEI programs of any kind should treat this as an ongoing compliance imperative.

2. Anti-American National Origin Bias

The agency filed a class action alleging that American black farm workers received inferior treatment compared to foreign workers and secured a $1.4 million consent decree against LeoPalace in Guam for preferential treatment of Japanese employees. Twenty-four outreach events reached over 4,400 attendees on this topic alone. The EEOC is working in coordination with the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Labor, and the Department of Justice on these matters. Employers with multinational workforces, H-1B or H-2A programs, or international staffing arrangements should evaluate whether any policies or practices could be characterized as favoring foreign-born workers.

3. Sex-Based Rights

The agency secured significant litigation outcomes on sexual harassment, pregnancy discrimination, and claims under the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, including the EEOC’s first resolutions under the PWFA. The recission of the 2024 Enforcement Guidance on Harassment, which had addressed sexual orientation and gender identify, signals a narrower interpretation of sex-based protections going forward. Seven new PWFA lawsuits were filed across multiple industries. Employers should ensure their accommodation processes can handle PWFA requests, while also recognizing that the agency’s interpretation of sex-based protection is evolving in ways that may create compliance uncertainty.

4. Religious Liberty

The EEOC filed 10 new religious discrimination lawsuits in FY 2025, more than three times the number filed in FY 2024. The agency secured millions in conciliation recoveries for employees denied religious accommodations to COVID-19 vaccine mandates. The $21 million Columbia University antisemitism settlement reflects the agency’s willingness to deploy Commissioner charges to advance enforcement priorities. Employers should revisit their religious accommodation policies and procedures to ensure they reflect the heightened standard articulated by the U.S. Supreme Court in Groff v. DeJoy, 600 U.S. 447 (2023), and should be prepared for an EEOC that will aggressively investigate claims of religious bias, including antisemitism and anti-Christian bias.

The Litigation Landscape: Fewer Suits, Higher Stakes

The OGC Annual Report reveals important shifts in the agency’s investigation strategy. While the 94 merits suits filed represent one of the lowest filing totals in a decade, the composition of the docket reflects deliberate choices. Sex and pregnancy discrimination claims accounted for 44.7% of suits filed. Disability claims represented 37.2%. Religion jumped to 10.6% of filings, a significant increase from prior years. Race discrimination, historically a dominant category, accounted for only 2.1% of new filings.

The agency’s appellate work also warrants attention. The Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services, 605 U.S. 303 (2025), adopted the position jointly advanced by the EEOC and the Solicitor General: Title VII’s evidentiary standards do not vary depending on whether the plaintiff is a member of a majority or minority group. Ames eliminates the “background circumstances” test that had provided employers with an additional procedural defense in certain circuits. The practical consequence is that majority-group plaintiffs now face no heightened evidentiary burden, which will increase the volume and viability of what were previously termed “reverse discrimination” claims.

What Employers Should Do Now

1. Audit existing DEI programs. Review all diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives against the framework established by the EEOC’s March 2025 technical assistance documents and the DOJ’s July 2025 guidance. Focus on whether any program grants preferential treatment based on protected characteristics, uses facially neutral criteria that function as proxies for race or sex, or could be characterized as creating a hostile work environment. Conduct this review under attorney-client privilege.

2. Tighten documentation of employment decisions. The EEOC’s investigation of Nike reveals the granularity of the agency’s document demands: seven years of hiring data, participant-level detail on diversity programs, and sortable databases of personnel decisions. Employers should ensure that all hiring, promotion, compensation, and termination decisions are documented with objective, job-related criteria that can withstand scrutiny.

3. Revisit religious accommodation processes. With the EEOC filing religious discrimination lawsuits at three times the prior year’s rate, employers should confirm that their accommodation processes reflect the Groff v. DeJoy standard and that front-line managers are trained to recognize and escalate accommodation requests rather than reflexively denying them.

4. Prepare for PWFA compliance enforcement. The EEOC’s first wave of PWFA litigation has arrived. Employers should review their leave, accommodation, and attendance policies to ensure they account for pregnancy-related limitations and do not penalize employees for using pregnancy-related accommodations.

5. Monitor for Commission quorum restoration. The EEOC now has three seated Commissioners. The January 2026 procedural change requiring Commission approval for most new litigation means that with a functioning quorum, the agency can now fully operationalize its enforcement agenda, including systemic cases that were held in abeyance. Employers should expect an increase in litigation filings in FY 2026 and 2027.

The EEOC FY 2025 reports confirm what the agency’s enforcement actions over the past year have already demonstrated: the Commission is pursuing a fundamentally different theory of what workplace discrimination looks like and where enforcement resources should be directed. Employers who proactively align their policies, documentation practices, and accommodation processes with this evolving enforcement posture will be far better positioned than those who wait for a subpoena or a Commissioner’s charge to force the issue.