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On June 4, 2026, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) rescinded its prior Strategic Enforcement Plan (“SEP”) for Fiscal Years 2024–2028 and replaced it with a new National Enforcement Plan (“NEP”) covering Fiscal Years 2025–2029. The EEOC is the federal agency responsible for preventing and addressing workplace discrimination. The NEP sets out the agency’s priorities over a multi-year period and is designed to have a lasting impact on equal employment opportunity. It guides all of the EEOC’s activities, including outreach, public education, technical assistance, enforcement, and litigation.

Some of the key aspects of the NEP are summarized below. Employers are encouraged to review the full NEP for additional details. It is important to note that the NEP is a guidance document and does not create any legally enforceable rights or obligations.

1. Global Principles Governing The NEP

The NEP incorporates several principles which have guided its development and will govern its implementation. A number of those principles are particularly significant for employers.

a. Prevention, Voluntary Resolution, And Litigation

The EEOC plans to fight workplace discrimination on three fronts: (1) prevention by educating employers and workers before problems arise; (2) voluntary resolution by encouraging parties to settle disputes through mediation, early settlements, and negotiated agreements rather than going to court; and (3) enforcement by pursuing litigation when necessary to hold employers accountable.

b. Using Constrained Resources For Strategic Impact

The EEOC receives a large volume of discrimination complaints each year, and its budget and staffing are limited. Because the agency cannot devote equal resources to every complaint, it must be strategic about which matters it prioritizes. Like other law enforcement agencies, the EEOC has the discretion to decide where to focus its efforts. The NEP identifies specific categories of enforcement priorities (discussed in the next section) to help the agency direct its attention where it can have the greatest impact.

c. Nationwide Enforcement Model

To make the best use of its limited resources, the EEOC expects its staff to work together across offices and departments. When workload, expertise, or other factors call for it, the agency’s leadership may assign cases to multiple offices, transfer cases between offices, or send headquarters staff to support field offices in handling major investigations or priority cases.

d. Executive Branch Agency And Administration Priorities

The EEOC confirms that, as a federal executive branch agency, it will align its enforcement efforts with the current administration’s policy goals and comply with relevant executive orders.

e. Prioritization Of Disparate Treatment Liability

The EEOC draws a distinction between two types of discrimination claims. “Disparate treatment” refers to intentional discrimination—for example, refusing to hire someone because of their race or sex. “Disparate impact” refers to situations where a seemingly neutral policy disproportionately affects a particular group, even if there was no intent to discriminate. While Congress authorized both types of claims under Title VII, the EEOC considers intentional discrimination to be a more serious concern. Under Executive Order 14281, Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy, the agency will prioritize intentional discrimination cases, scale back the use of disparate impact theories in investigations “to the maximum degree possible,” and will not file or continue to pursue lawsuits based on disparate impact claims.

f. Individualized Assessment Of Matters

Whether a particular matter is treated as a priority under the NEP depends on two things: the type of issue involved and a case-by-case evaluation of whether the facts are strong enough to justify prioritizing it.

g. Broad Enforcement Of Laws In EEOC’s Jurisdiction

While the priority categories in the NEP are meant to guide the agency’s decisions about which cases to pursue, the EEOC is not limited to those categories. The agency retains the flexibility to prioritize any investigation or case it considers important, even if it falls outside the listed priorities.

h. Collaborating With Other Federal Agencies

The EEOC will collaborate with other federal agencies that are tasked with enforcement of civil rights, including the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Department of Labor, and the U.S. Department of Education.

i. Collaborating With State And Local Agencies

The EEOC will collaborate with state and local agencies tasked with enforcement of civil rights within the agency’s jurisdiction, including state fair employment practices agencies and state attorneys general. Such collaboration may include workload-sharing arrangements, memoranda of understanding, coordinated investigations and litigation, information sharing, training, and other cooperative enforcement efforts consistent with applicable law.

2. Substantive Categories Of Enforcement Priorities

The EEOC has identified several categories of substantive priorities, each of which will apply, as appropriate, to investigation, conciliation, and litigation, as well as the agency’s amicus curiae and intervention representation.

a. Repeated Or Overt Discrimination And DEI Policies

The NEP focuses on potential violations of anti-discrimination laws—whether affecting a single individual or a broader group—that raise NEP issues and are likely to have wider significance. This includes cases involving repeated or obvious discrimination and policies that are discriminatory on their face. Examples may include: job postings that discourage or exclude applicants based on a protected characteristic (such as race, sex, or age); staffing agencies that refuse to place workers based on a protected characteristic; steering individuals into certain jobs because of their protected characteristics; company-wide policies that broadly deny workplace accommodations; and widespread or systemic harassment.

The NEP also targets intentional discrimination that arises from broad employment policies, programs, or practices labeled as “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (“DEI”) or similar terms, particularly those adopted by large corporations, prominent universities, and other major institutions. This includes the use of race- or sex-based quotas, including so-called “aspirational goals” that effectively function as quotas or that encourage decision-making based on race or sex in hiring, interviewing, staffing, layoffs, and promotions. It also covers restricting access to training, internships, fellowships, mentorships, sponsorships, apprenticeships, bonuses, benefits, and other workplace opportunities based on protected characteristics. Other examples include diverse slate policies (requiring a minimum number of candidates from underrepresented groups), diverse hiring panel requirements, mandatory diversity statements from job candidates, evaluation methods that factor in protected characteristics, and tying executive or employee pay to race- or sex-based demographic targets.

b. Law Development Cases

The EEOC prioritizes cases that could shape how anti-discrimination laws are interpreted, especially cases involving recent Supreme Court decisions or unresolved legal questions. Key areas of focus include how Title VII applies to certain DEI practices in light of recent rulings, particularly Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services, 605 U.S. 303 (2025) (which addressed discrimination claims brought by members of majority groups), Muldrow v. St. Louis, 601 U.S. 346 (2024) (which lowered the bar for what counts as a harmful job action), and Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, 600 U.S. 181 (2023) (which struck down race-conscious college admissions). The agency is also focused on how older Supreme Court decisions permitting voluntary affirmative action programs should be read in light of these newer rulings. Other priorities include employers’ duty to accommodate employees’ religious practices (under Groff v. DeJoy, 600 U.S. 447 (2023), the scope of protections following Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, 590 U.S. 644 (2020)—particularly regarding employees’ rights to single-sex intimate spaces, the right to express views about the binary nature of sex, and religious accommodations—and the reach of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act).

c. Protecting Vulnerable Workers

The NEP prioritizes cases that protect workers who may be especially at risk of exploitation, including teenage workers, people with limited literacy or education, low-wage workers, survivors of sexual assault, and workers with developmental or intellectual disabilities.

d. Protecting The Integrity Of The EEOC’s Enforcement Process

The NEP prioritizes cases that involve protecting the EEOC’s ability to investigate and resolve discrimination complaints effectively. This includes cases where employers retaliate against individuals for filing complaints with the EEOC or opposing workplace discrimination, especially where the legal boundaries of retaliation protections are at issue. Other examples include: cases where an employer challenges the validity of EEOC guidelines or regulations as a defense; disputes over the EEOC’s right to access information, including efforts to enforce subpoenas; cases where an employer has materially violated the terms of a prior settlement or agreement with the EEOC; and cases involving failures to comply with the EEOC’s recordkeeping and reporting requirements where there are signs of broader legal violations.

e. Evenhanded Enforcement

Each EEOC component is required to ensure evenhanded enforcement of the civil rights laws enforced by the agency, mindful that EEOC staff are public servants working on behalf of all American workers protected by those laws.

3. Chair Priorities

The following ongoing Chair Priorities complement, and are applications of, the substantive categories of priorities listed in the NEP. They are: (A) remedying DEI-related race and sex discrimination; (B) protecting American workers from anti-American national origin discrimination; (C) defending women’s rights to single-sex spaces at work and workers’ rights to express the binary nature of sex; and (D) protecting workers’ religious liberty rights to receive religious accommodations and be free from religious discrimination, harassment, and related retaliation.

4. Practical Considerations

The NEP represents a major shift in how the EEOC will approach enforcement and it has real, immediate consequences for employers in every industry.

Perhaps most importantly, the NEP treats DEI-related policies as a potential source of intentional discrimination. This means employers with diversity-focused programs (such as hiring initiatives, demographic goals, diverse slate requirements, or executive pay tied to diversity metrics) should carefully review those practices with legal counsel. Programs originally designed to promote inclusivity could now be viewed by the EEOC as discriminatory employment policies. Employers should evaluate whether any of their DEI programs factor protected characteristics (such as race or sex) into employment decisions, and assess the legal risks under the NEP’s enforcement priorities.

The NEP’s decision to move away from disparate impact claims also matters in practice. Employers whose diversity efforts have relied on the argument that their policies are neutral and nondiscriminatory may find that this defense carries less weight when the EEOC is focused almost entirely on intentional discrimination.

Employers should also take note of the NEP’s emphasis on retaliation and the integrity of the EEOC’s processes. Companies that have previously settled cases or entered into agreements with the EEOC should make sure they are fully complying with those agreements, since violations are now a stated enforcement priority.

The EEOC enforces several major federal employment laws, including Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (prohibiting discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin), the Equal Pay Act of 1963, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, Section 501 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, Titles I and V of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, Title II of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008, and the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. Employers should review their policies and practices under each of these laws in light of the priorities now set out in the NEP.

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About The Author

Khesraw Karmand is an associate in Sheppard’s Labor and Employment Practice Group in the firm’s Los Angeles office. Mr. Karmand has broad experience defending employers in discrimination, harassment, retaliation, wage and hour, wrongful termination, and other employment-related litigation. He is experienced in all phases of litigation in state and federal courts across the country, including pre-suit investigations; fact, expert, and class certification discovery; conducting and defending depositions; motions practice; trial preparation; trials; and appeals.

He has co-authored articles for the Daily Journal and is a contributing author of the ALERT Newsletter.

Mr. Karmand received his law degree from the University of California, Hastings, and his undergraduate degree, from the University of California, Riverside, cum laude