Compliance Stuff

On June 30, 2026, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced that it had rescinded two documents relating to permissible affirmative action 1 under Title VII of the U.S. Civil Rights Act: (1) its regulatory guidelines 2 on “appropriate” affirmative action under the statute; and (2) section 607 of its Compliance Manual, which addressed those guidelines and the agency’s enforcement positions with respect to permissible affirmative action and affirmative action plans.  Both the guidelines and the related portion of the Compliance Manual explained that voluntary affirmative action plans were only permitted under federal equal employment opportunity laws when designed to remedy past or present discrimination or to address manifest imbalances in traditionally segregated job categories and carefully structured to avoid unlawfully disadvantaging other employees. The documents emphasized that to be lawful, a plan had to be temporary, flexible, and narrowly tailored, and ...

On June 10, 2026, a coalition of twenty states and the District of Columbia filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland challenging federal agency actions taken to implement Executive Order (EO) 14398, the Trump administration’s March 26, 2026, order barring federal contractors and subcontractors from engaging in “racially discriminatory DEI activities.” 00:00 17:43 Quick Hits Twenty states and the District of Columbia, acting in their capacity as federal contractors, have filed suit challenging the FAR Council’s implementing actions for EO 14398, arguing those actions exceed the agency’s statutory authority and were issued without the notice-and-comment process required under federal procurement policy requirements. The state coalition targets the agency implementing actions under the APA, arguing they are procedurally defective and the resulting contract terms too vague to enforce. Another lawsuit challenges the executive order on First Amendment grounds and al...

WASHINGTON – Over the past 15 months of the second Trump Administration, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) under the leadership of Chair Andrea Lucas has undertaken exhaustive efforts to restore evenhanded enforcement of employment civil rights laws on behalf of all Americans, including by delivering on Administration civil rights enforcement priorities and implementing key deliverables entrusted to the EEOC in 11 different Executive Orders. [i] The majority of the EEOC’s law enforcement work is confidential and remains so prior to a public settlement or filing of a legal action. While confidentiality requirements limit our ability to share the full scope of our activities, the agency is working tirelessly to ensure equal opportunity for American workers. To date, the EEOC has taken the following public actions: EEOC Protects Religious Freedom Since January 2025, the EEOC has filed 16 religious discrimination lawsuits and recovered over $63 million on behalf of re...