EEOC's Renewed Focus on Religious Discrimination: What Employers Need to Know
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) is poised to elevate its focus on religious discrimination in the workplace and employers should be alert. With its newly restored quorum allowing Acting Chair Andrea Lucas to move forward with more aggressive enforcement, the agency is expected to pursue a broader litigation agenda emphasizing religious accommodation rights under Title VII. In 2025 alone, the EEOC filed 11 religious discrimination suits, the highest in nearly a decade . Lucas credited the agency’s “tremendous wins” in defending religious liberty and signaled that this momentum will continue. What This Means for Employers The EEOC’s direction marks a clear shift towards faith-based accommodation enforcement following the Supreme Court’s decision in Groff v. DeJoy, 600 U.S. 447 (2023). Under Groff, employers must grant religious accommodations unless doing so would cause substantial increased costs or undue hardship. This standard sets a much...