The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) systemic discrimination initiative got a shot in the arm Nov. 19, 2009, when the 2nd Circuit boosted the agency’s power to subpoena an employer’s nationwide employment records.
When the EEOC launched its systemic discrimination initiative in 2006, it said it would focus on patterns of unlawful bias throughout a company’s operations, rather than on individual complaints of discrimination. In practice, that has meant taking one or two charges as an indication of broader discrimination and seeking enterprise-wide records from an employer to try to make that case.
