Looping in Loper Bright to Require the EEOC to Follow Its Enabling Statute
Are the days numbered for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) ability to permit plaintiffs to eschew the administrative process by issuing Notice of Right to Sue letters “on request” prior to 180 days? The short answer: they may certainly be. On July 30, 2025, in one of the first decisions concerning deference to EEOC regulations since the Supreme Court of the United States struck down Chevron deference in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo , the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York in Prichard v. Long Island University invalidated an EEOC regulation allowing it to issue “right to sue” notices on request before 180 days had passed. Noting that the plaintiff employee had explicitly relied on cases that reviewed the EEOC’s regulation under Chevron , the court remanded the federal portion of the plaintiff’s claims to the EEOC and dismissed her state law claims without prejudice. On a broader level, this decision may signa...