Compliance Stuff

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission will no longer investigate complaints based on a legal concept that recognizes unintentional discrimination. Business owners face one less threat of falling afoul of federal regulations, though that might not be good news to all entrepreneurs. This week, the  Equal Employment Opportunity Commission  (EEOC) officially abandoned investigations of any  discrimination complaints  based on disparate impact liability, long viewed as an effective legal tool in those cases. What that means for employers is they no longer have to worry about being pursued by federal agencies for allegedly having policies or business practices that may unintentionally disadvantage certain groups of employees in hiring or promotion decisions. That’s the  consequence of the EEOC  now acting on an April executive order requiring all area, local, and district offices to  cease pursuing worker complaints  founded on disparate liabili...

  And you thought they’d be asleep the next four years. This week, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued a  press release  indicating that the EEOC would be cracking down on antisemitism in the workplace, with special emphasis on college and university workplaces. Although institutions of higher education are the primary focus of the EEOC, the press release made clear that  no  employers should tolerate antisemitic harassment or discrimination. (The EEOC does not have jurisdiction over antisemitism that targets students, but of course other government agencies do.) The press release quotes Acting EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas as follows: In the wake of the . . . Hamas terror attacks in Israel, news coverage of the severe outbreaks of antisemitism at our country’s leading universities focused on the students affected . . .. But universities are workplaces, too, and large-scale employers. In addition to Jewish professors on campus, universities employ ...

  Week 5 of Trump 2. I reported a few weeks ago that  President Trump fired two Democratic Commissioners of the Equal Employme nt Opportunity Commission (former Chair Charlotte Burrows and Jocelyn Samuels) . He appointed Commissioner Andrea Lucas (R) as Acting Chair and left one Democrat, Kalpana Kotagal, on the Commission. One additional seat was already vacant, and as far as I can tell, no one has been nominated to fill that seat, or the seats vacated by Ms. Burrows and Ms. Samuels. The firings plus the vacancy mean that the five-member EEOC currently has only two members and therefore lacks a quorum . That means they can’t issue regulations or guidance, or withdraw or replace regulations or guidance issued during the Biden (or any other) Administration. However, enforcement activity can continue. Or stop, as the case may be. Without question, the EEOC is backing down in certain areas. After an article in  Bloomberg Law  yesterday criticized what was going on,...

President Trump just took the unprecedented step of firing two Democratic members of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and freed himself up to quickly install a majority of Republican commissioners rather than having to wait until their normal terms expire over the next two years. The terminations of Charlotte Burrows and Jocelyn Samuels, revealed yesterday, will have reverberations in workplaces across the country and will certainly set off legal challenges over the scope of presidential power. In the meantime, employers will be left to grapple with the appropriate responses during a limbo period. What is the impact of these terminations and how should employers adjust? Here is a set of FAQs to help guide you through these tumultuous times. What does the EEOC do? The EEOC is the federal agency that enforces anti-bias workplace laws based on race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, gender identity, and sexual orientation), national origin, age, disability, and geneti...