Over the past 20 years, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has annually received anywhere between 75,000 and 100,000 charges of discrimination (charges). In Fiscal Year 2016, the EEOC received 91,503 charges, responded to more than 585,000 calls and received more than 160,000 inquiries in field offices. In that same time period, EEOC legal staff filed 86 lawsuits alleging discrimination–less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the total charges received. Those lawsuits included 55 individual suits and 31 suits involving multiple individuals or discriminatory policies. Given the volume of demand for its assistance and the fractional number of lawsuits it pursues, the EEOC issues a multi-year strategic enforcement plan to maximize its use of resources and provide direction to its staff.

In October 2016, the EEOC released its strategic enforcement plan for Fiscal Years 2017-2021, which followed the conclusion of its strategic enforcement plan for Fiscal Years 2012-2016, see U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Strategic Enforcement Plan, Fiscal Years 2017-2021, available at https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/plan/sep-2017.cfm. Both plans list “eliminating barriers in recruitment and hiring” as the first national substantive priority. The 2017-2021 plan continues the EEOC’s focus on discriminatory hiring practices and pledges to “focus on class-based recruitment and hiring practices that discriminate against racial, ethnic and religious groups, older workers, women, and people with disabilities.” The 2017-2021 plan names “the growth of the temporary workforce, the increasing use of data-driven selection devices, and the lack of diversity in certain industries and workplaces” as “areas of particular concern,” and notes that this priority “typically involved systemic cases” but may also be included “if it raises a policy, practice or pattern of discrimination.” As the EEOC embarks on its 2017-2021 plan, it is also significantly increasing the number of suits it filed in 2016. In Fiscal Year 2017 the EEOC filed approximately 190 lawsuits, more than 80 of which were filed in the last month of the fiscal year (September 2017). By nearly doubling its lawsuits from the prior year, the EEOC may be signaling a return to its levels of litigation from the early 2000s, when the EEOC typically filed between 200 and 400 lawsuits per year.