EEOC Issues New National Enforcement Plan: A Roadmap for Employers

On June 4, 2026, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) released a National Enforcement Plan (NEP) which covers fiscal years 2025 - 2029. At the same time the agency rescinded the Strategic Enforcement Plan (SEP) that was created under the Biden administration and was slated to be in effect from fiscal years 2024 through 2028.

The new plan reflects a significant shift in enforcement priorities under EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas and the current Republican-controlled Commission. According to the EEOC, the NEP is intended to guide all aspects of the agency’s work, including investigations, litigation, outreach, education, and voluntary dispute resolution. For employers, the NEP offers a detailed roadmap of the compliance concerns that will draw EEOC attention over the next several years.

Overview

The EEOC’s enforcement plans are used to identify subject matter priorities that will guide the agency’s work in preventing and remedying employment discrimination. The first SEP was created in fiscal year 2013, covering 2013 – 2016. The most recent SEP created under the Biden administration was created through a process that included public listening sessions, a public email box, and a public comment period. This differs from the newly released NEP, which was developed without public input. Although the EEOC had scheduled a public meeting on June 3, 2026 to vote on the NEP's release, the meeting was canceled and the NEP was released afterward.

The NEP includes four sections:

• Global Principles
• Substantive Categories of Priorities
• Chair Priorities
• Implementation

The section on Global Principles includes nine principles that the agency states have guided the development of the NEP and will govern its implementation. These include how the EEOC will collaborate with other federal, state, and local agencies, and how they will assess and prioritize cases. The global priorities make clear the EEOC will use its enforcement discretion to “advance the Administration’s policy objectives and comply with relevant Executive Orders.”

The NEP includes 6 substantive priority areas:

• Matters involving repeated or overt discrimination and those involving intentional discrimination that result from broad-based employment policies, programs, or practices
• Cases that can potentially promote the development of case law that will support the antidiscrimination statutes the EEOC enforces
• Cases affecting ‘vulnerable workers,’ which are described as teenage workers, persons with limited literacy, employees in low wage jobs, sexual assault survivors, and employees with developmental or intellectual disabilities
• Cases that involve the integrity or effectiveness of EEOC’s enforcement process, including retaliation for participating in EEOC proceedings
  Cases where EEOC can clarify liability under the statutes it enforces in matters involving religious organizations, and
• “Evenhanded enforcement of the civil rights laws enforced by the agency”

The section of the NEP outlining Chair Priorities aligns with the priorities that Chair Lucas has been communicating since the early days of her tenure as Chair. These include a focus on:

• DEI-related discrimination
• Anti-American national original discrimination
• Workers’ religious liberty rights, and
• Women’s rights to single-sex spaces at work as well as workers’ rights to express the binary nature of sex.

In a statement accompanying the release of the NEP, Chair Lucas stated, “The National Enforcement Plan reaffirms the agency’s unwavering commitment to merit-based, evenhanded enforcement of our nation’s civil rights laws.”

Key Components of the National Enforcement Plan

1. Focus on Intentional Discrimination

The most significant change is the EEOC’s emphasis on investigating and litigating claims involving intentional discrimination (disparate treatment) instead of disparate impact claims (claims regarding neutral employment policies that may have a disproportionate effect on protected groups). The EEOC’s action comes on the heels of Executive Order 14281, which stated the Trump Administration’s policy of “de-prioritizing” disparate impact claims across all federal enforcement agencies.

The NEP emphasizes that EEOC enforcement resources will be directed toward cases involving overt or deliberate discrimination and those that challenge broad-based employment policies, programs or practices that result in intentional discrimination. EEOC’s most recent budget justification makes clear that EEOC will carry out this priority through large-scale systemic pattern and practice treatment cases, and not just individual claims of discrimination: “Litigating these cases often will require expert witnesses and the discovery of large-scale selection data to identify aggrieved individuals and support the existence and extent of a pattern or practice of discrimination alongside non-statistical evidence of such a pattern or practice (including direct statements, written policies, the terms of race- and sex-restricted DEI-related programs and privileges of employment, and anecdotal evidence).” Companies with centralized hiring, recruitment and other widely applicable employment practices and processes should take note.

2. Continued Scrutiny of DEI Programs

The NEP identifies diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives as a major enforcement priority where such programs may involve employment decisions based on race, sex, or other protected characteristics. Areas expected to receive scrutiny include:

• Race- or sex-based quotas in any employment action;
• Limiting access to employment programs, such as internships, employer-sponsored groups or events or other privileges of employment; and
• Diverse candidate slate requirements, diversity-focused interview panels, executive or other employee compensation tied to diversity goals, and other similar practices that “require, permit or incentivize the use of race or sex in employment”

3. National Origin and Immigration-Related Priorities

The agency plans to focus on policies that may favor foreign workers over U.S. workers, including hiring preferences for guest-worker visa holders or PERM applicants. The Commission characterizes these matters as potential national-origin discrimination issues. This aligns with the Trump Administration’s Project Firewall that is an inter-agency initiative designed to protect the rights, wages and job opportunities of American workers.

4. Scope of Recent Supreme Court Cases

The NEP specifically calls out claims that relate to the application or scope of recent Supreme Court decisions, or cases where the EEOC is seeking the Supreme Court’s resolution of federal circuit court disagreements related to NEP priorities. The NEP highlights an interest in specific recent Supreme Court decisions that cover topics including:

• Analysis of DEI programs and voluntary affirmative action programs after several recent Supreme Court cases;
• Clarifying the scope of Bostock v. Clayton County, which established that Title VII prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity;
• Employers’ obligation to provide religious accommodation following Groff v. DeJoy;
• Exploring the standard for actionable claims under Muldrow v. St. Louis, which held that employees need to show “some harm” but not significant, material, or serious harm to bring a claim; and
  Scope of liability under the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act.

5. Continued Use of Education, Conciliation, and Litigation

Despite the shift in substantive priorities, the NEP retains the EEOC’s longstanding three-part enforcement framework:

• Prevention through education and outreach;
• Voluntary resolution of disputes through mediation and conciliation; and
• Litigation when voluntary compliance efforts fail.

Democratic Commissioner’s Dissent

Commissioner Kalpana Kotagal, the Commission’s sole remaining Democratic member, voted against adoption of the NEP and issued a public dissent describing the NEP as a "dramatic shift in the agency's enforcement, outreach, and litigation programs." She argued that the plan represents a departure from the EEOC’s traditional bipartisan enforcement approach and risks politicizing the agency’s work. According to Kotagal, the new priorities could divert resources away from longstanding civil rights concerns and be used to advance broader political objectives rather than address workplace discrimination affecting vulnerable workers.

Key Steps for Employers

Employers should consider the following actions in light of the new enforcement landscape:

1. Review All Workplace Policies and Practices Through the NEP’s Lens

Review recruiting, hiring, promotion, mentoring, leadership-development, and compensation initiatives to ensure that employment decisions are not motivated, in whole or in part, by protected characteristics such as race, color, religion, sex and national origin. In earlier guidance, the Trump administration has emphasized that Title VII’s protections “apply equally to all racial, ethnic, and national origin groups, as well as both sexes.”

Evaluate your policies through that lens. Particular attention should be paid to quotas, preferences, or demographic targets. Ensure that workplace policies are applied consistently and that decisions are based on objective, job-related criteria that can be documented and defended.

2. Follow Title VII and Other Federal Law Requirements

Keep in mind that the NEP is an enforcement priority document – it does not change the law. Although the NEP will refocus EEOC’s litigation docket, employers must remember that disparate impact claims are still actionable under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As a result, applicants and employees can still challenge neutral policies under a disparate impact theory, including by filing charges with the EEOC and pursuing those cases in court.

Likewise, the EEOC’s focus on DEI-related discrimination does not mean that employers can ignore policies and practices that discriminate in other ways, including those that fail to remove barriers to equal employment opportunity for minority workers and women. Similarly, organizations must also continue to comply with other federal obligations, such as the Equal Pay Act of 1963 (EPA); the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA); the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA); the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (GINA); and the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA) – all of which are enforced, and will continue to be enforced, by the EEOC, and can be the basis for individual litigation as well.

3. Re-evaluate religious accommodation policies

Religious accommodation has sometimes received less attention from employers than other workplace compliance issues, but recent EEOC enforcement activity suggests that this area warrants renewed focus. Employers should take this opportunity to review and update their religious accommodation policies and practices to ensure they align with current legal standards and EEOC enforcement priorities. This includes evaluating accommodation request procedures, training managers and HR personnel on handling religious accommodation requests and ensuring that decisions are based on individualized assessments rather than assumptions about undue hardship. Proactive review can help reduce legal risk and promote consistent, compliant workplace practices.

4. Strengthen Documentation and Manager Training

Train managers and HR personnel on Title VII requirements and maintain clear documentation supporting hiring, promotion, discipline, and termination decisions. Make sure training focuses on the EEOC’s enforcement priorities, as well as other compliance obligations even if not highlighted in the NEP, such as disability discrimination issues.

5. Monitor State and Local Requirements

Increasingly, state and local anti-discrimination laws impose different, and often greater, obligations than federal law. For example, although the EEOC is reducing its emphasis on disparate-impact theories, many states already recognize disparate-impact liability and other states are taking steps to clarify that such practices are prohibited. As a result, compliance is getting more complex, not less so. Make sure your organization is complying with all applicable laws, not just those receiving the most attention.

Bottom Line

The EEOC’s FY 2025–2029 National Enforcement Plan marks one of the most significant shifts in federal employment-discrimination enforcement in recent years. The agency is moving away from systemic and disparate-impact theories and toward investigations involving intentional discrimination, DEI-related practices, religious-liberty claims, and national-origin issues affecting U.S. workers. Employers should proactively review workplace policies and programs to ensure compliance with this evolving enforcement framework while continuing to account for state and local legal requirements. To keep ahead of these continuing developments, make sure to sign up for Berkshire’s blog.