It seems like everyone is trying to more with less these days. The EEOC is no exception.
As Gerald Maatman predicted last October, the decrease of $7.3 million in the EEOC’s budget would mean shifting tactics and strategies toward claims of systemic discrimination. It would appear as though this prediction has come to pass.
In its draft strategic plan for the next four years, the EEOC has vowed to continue its focus on cases involving systemic discrimination. Claims of a pattern or practice of alleged discrimination has been an enforcement priority since 2006, but will constitute a larger percentage of the EEOC’s enforcement efforts going forward. The EEOC has received nearly 100,000 individual charges of discrimination annually, which has “created a need for the EEOC to think strategically about how best to target its efforts to ensure the strongest and broadest impact possible in its efforts to stop unlawful employment discrimination.”
Individual claims of discrimination will still play a role in the agency’s enforcement efforts. According to the Plan, “[e]ven as the EEOC gradually increases its percentage of these cases, it will continue to pursue individual cases of discrimination. Strategic selection of individual cases furthers the agency’s statutory mandate of preventing unlawful employment discrimination.”
It remains to be seen how the EEOC’s litigation docket will break down between individual claims and systemic claims. But we do know that regardless of the composition of claims, the EEOC will be taking an “integrated, holistic approach to enforcement from beginning to end, without separating the investigation and conciliation stage of the EEOC’s work from its litigation stage.”