Seyfarth Synopsis: While we viewed the EEOC's Fiscal Year 2024 as "sluggish," the Commission entered FY 2025 with a hefty budget, a brimming pipeline of charges, and a Democratic majority of Commissioners, suggesting a robust year of EEOC-initiated litigation was on the way. The EEOC's fiscal year closed today, and what promised to be a watershed year was anything but. The Trump Administration's swiftly implemented leadership changes, budget cuts, and dramatic shift in priorities led to a roller-coaster for field staff and employers alike. Ultimately, the EEOC filed just 93 lawsuits in FY 2025, marking a ten-year low in Commission litigation activity. Despite a notable pullback in litigation activity, a close analysis of FY 2025 filings can help employers identify the EEOC's priority areas and understand what to expect going forward.
In previous administrations, the EEOC's litigation arm was extraordinarily active, filing as many as 300 merit lawsuits in a given year. These high levels of EEOC filing activity dropped significantly under the first Trump Administration, and this trend continued through the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. For instance, we previously reported totals of 94 merit filings in FY 2020, 111 filings in FY 2021, and 94 filing in FY 2022 (the EEOC's fiscal year runs from October 1 to September 30).
By FY 2023, however, the EEOC under the Biden administration had installed a new Democratic Commissioner (Kalpana Kotagal) and General Counsel (Karla Gilbride), as well as securing a sizable budget increase from Congress. With these pieces in place, the EEOC revved its engines and filed 144 merit lawsuits in FY 2023, which marked a five-year high for the Commission. Many expected this momentum to continue into FY 2024 in light of the agency having its first Democratic majority in years. Yet, the EEOC surprisingly eased off the gas on its litigation activity in FY 2024, filing only 96 merit lawsuits last fiscal year.
With this background in mind, the EEOC's FY 2025 started obscured by questions surrounding an upcoming presidential election and how it would shape the direction of EEOC enforcement. Following the election, President Trump took a series of swift actions, some unprecedented, that had a significant impact on EEOC leadership and enforcement. In late January 2025, President Trump took the anticipated steps of elevating Andrea Lucas to Acting Chair of the EEOC and terminated EEOC General Counsel Karla Gilbride. (President Biden had terminated the previous EEOC General Counsel, a Trump nominee.) In an action without precedent, President Trump also fired EEOC Commissioners Charlotte Burrows and Jocelyn Samuels, both of whom had years left on their appointed terms. This left the EEOC without a quorum, as only Acting Chair Lucas and Commissioner Kalpana Kotagal remained as Commissioners. (A Trump appointee awaits Senate confirmation; Acting Chair Lucas was re-confirmed to remain as Commissioner for another five-year term.)
Which leads us to the most recent fiscal year from October 2024 through September 2025. The EEOC filed just 93 merit lawsuits this fiscal year. This represents not only a ten-year low, but also one of the lowest numbers of total filings lodged by the Commission in the past three decades. To put this number into context, in FY 2023, the EEOC filed 71 lawsuits in September alone. While there are still meaningful takeaways from the EEOC's areas of focus in FY 2025, the bottom line is that EEOC litigation activity has now remained at historically low levels for the second consecutive year. But what can we learn from the matters that actually hit the docket?
FY 2025 Cases Filed By Month
At the end of every EEOC fiscal year, the Seyfarth team analyzes each EEOC filing to identify key trends and provide our one-of-a-kind analysis. Beginning with the timing of the EEOC's filings, the graphic below displays the number of EEOC lawsuits filed by month from FY 2022 through FY 2025.
In most years, the EEOC starts its fiscal year at a fairly slow pace. This year, however, the Commission hit the ground running by filing 24 lawsuits in the first four months of its fiscal year. The EEOC filed 15 lawsuits in January alone, with the timing suggesting a response to the presidential election and EEOC enforcement personnel seeking to take action before a change in administration. After the change in administration, the EEOC also achieved a five-year high in terms of June filings when it launched 18 lawsuits in June 2025. While September was (once again) the EEOC's busiest month, it was far less active at the end of its fiscal year as compared to prior years. The EEOC filed 35 lawsuits in September 2025, compared to 56 September filings in FY 2024, 71 September filings in FY 2023, and 46 September filings in FY 2022.
FY 2025 Cases Analyzed By EEOC District Office
In addition to tracking the total number of filings, we also monitor which of the EEOC's 15 District Offices are most actively filing new cases. In FY 2025, we saw the Chicago District Office return to its typically-high levels of filing activity by leading the pack with 11 merit lawsuit filings. Behind Chicago, Philadelphia (8 filings), Indianapolis (8 filings), and Houston (8 filings) also had busy years, which is in keeping with recent trends from those offices.
Conversely, Districts that have traditionally been very busy— such as Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco—were noticeably quiet this year, as these Offices filed only 4, 6, and 3 lawsuits, respectively. This drop in filings from the West Coast Offices has now remained consistent for the last several fiscal years, and stands in stark contrast to the Obama-era EEOC, under which these West Coast Offices filed dozens of lawsuits per year.
Analysis of the Types of Lawsuits Filed in FY 2025
While the quantity and location of EEOC filings offer a view into the Commission's litigation activity in a given year, analyzing the types of claims being asserted in EEOC lawsuits separately provides valuable insights regarding the EEOC's specific areas of emphasis. In FY 2025, despite the continued decrease in overall filings, the EEOC's filing numbers generally aligned with prior years. This means that the vast majority of EEOC lawsuits were filed under Title VII and the Americans with Disabilities Act. The Commission also filed nine lawsuits under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act in FY 2025. Additionally, while Equal Pay Act claims are typically not a common target for EEOC lawsuits, the EEOC did not file any EPA claims this fiscal year.
The ADEA is typically the third-most commonly statute cited in EEOC lawsuits, but in FY 2025, the ADEA was overtaken by filings asserting pregnancy-related violations. This fiscal year, the EEOC filed 10 lawsuits under the Pregnancy Discrimination Act and/or the newly-enacted Pregnant Workers' Fairness Act. When considering claims asserted on the basis of either sex or pregnancy, the EEOC filed a whopping 37 cases alleging such claims. This emphasis on sex and pregnancy-related issues aligns with public statements by Acting Chair Lucas, who has placed an emphasis on enforcing protections in both of these areas.
It is important to note, however, that the EEOC under Acting Chair Lucas has pursued sex-based discrimination without stepping into the area of LGBTQ-related workplace issues. Indeed, on January 28, 2025, the EEOC issued a statement in which Acting Chair Lucas emphasized, "[b]iological sex is real, and it matters . . . Sex is binary (male and female) and immutable. It is not harassment to acknowledge these truth—or to use language like pronouns that flow from these realities, even repeatedly." To that end, the EEOC in FY 2025 filed only two lawsuits concerning transgender workers or other gender identity issues: EEOC v. Starboard Group, Inc., et al., No. 3:24-cv-2260 (S.D. Ill.) and EEOC v. Brik Enterprises, Inc., et al., No. 2:24-cv-12817 (E.D. Mich.). Both of these lawsuits were filed in October 2024 during the Biden administration. It did not take long for the EEOC to reverse course on these matters. Following President Trump's January 20, 2025 Executive Order titled "Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government," the EEOC moved to dismiss both of these actions (although private plaintiffs intervened to continue pursuing these claims). No such actions have been filed since.
Taking a closer look at these numbers, the ADA once again remained a focus for the EEOC. Despite the change in administration and the subsequent shifts to EEOC leadership, ADA issues remained at the top of the EEOC's priority list. The Commission filed 34 disability-related lawsuits in FY 2025, which is more than it filed in FY 2022, despite overall activity in FY 2022 far outpacing filings this year. In terms of the specific disabilities at issue in these lawsuits, the EEOC built on a trend that started last year by continuing to sue on behalf of individuals with hearing or vision impairments, and those that may be difficult for employers to identify and accommodate, such as depression, anxiety, PTSD, and other mental health conditions.
On the other hand, the EEOC filed significantly fewer cases asserting race or national origin discrimination in FY 2025. The Commission filed only three such lawsuits in FY 2025, compared to 14 in FY 2024, 27 in FY 2023, and 17 in FY 2022. In fact, FY 2025 saw the lowest number of race / national origin-based filings by the EEOC in at least a decade. Two of three lawsuits that the EEOC did file were both grounded in theories of reverse discrimination. (EEOC v. Leopalace Guam Corp., No. 1:25-cv-4 (D. Guam) asserted claims of discrimination against non-Japanese workers, while EEOC v. Seward and Son Planting Co., No. 4:25-cv-155 (N.D. Miss.) asserted claims of discrimination on behalf of Black, American workers, with allegations that the employer gave preference to non-Black, non-American workers.) Along these same lines, the EEOC published a press release in February 2025 in which Acting Chair Lucas committed to protecting American workers from anti-American bias.
Another interesting takeaway from this year's filing activity concerns religious discrimination. In 2023, we reported on the striking rise of over 600% in religious discrimination charges during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite this increase from 2,111 religion-based charges in FY 2021 to nearly 14,000 religion charges in FY 2022, the EEOC filed just four religion-based lawsuits in FY 2024. In FY 2025, however, it appears the backlog of EEOC religious discrimination charges has fed the EEOC's litigation activity, as the Commission filed 11 lawsuits asserting religious discrimination or failure to accommodate religious beliefs under Title VII. This trend once again aligns with the EEOC's stated enforcement agenda, as the EEOC released a public statement in August 2025 touting its efforts to protect religious freedom in the workplace. Acting Chair Lucas was quoted in the statement as commenting that, "[d]uring the previous administration, workers' religious protections too often took a backseat to woke policies. Under my leadership, the EEOC is restoring evenhanded enforcement of Title VII—ensuring that workers are not forced to choose between their paycheck and their faith."
Our analysis of the EEOC's FY 2025 filing activity has revealed a number of other important trends that should be on every employer's radar. As a preview to our annual EEOC-Initiated Litigation Report (click HERE to view last year's Report), other relevant takeaways from the EEOC's FY 2025 include:
- Industry: Nearly one out of five of the EEOC's merit lawsuits were filed against employers in the healthcare industry. Additionally, while the Commission continued its practice of suing several household name brands, the EEOC unexpectedly focused much of its litigation efforts on very small regional or local businesses, some barely employing enough people to meet the definition of an "employer" under EEO statutes. The Commission also filed multiple lawsuits against state/local government entities, which is not typical of the EEOC.
- Scope: Since 2006, the EEOC has made "the identification, investigation, and litigation of systemic discrimination cases (i.e. pattern or practice, policy, and/or class cases where the alleged discrimination has a broad impact on an industry, profession, company, or geographic area)" a top priority in its litigation playbook. Despite this clear and consistent focus on systemic litigation, the EEOC filed the vast majority of its FY 2025 lawsuits (nearly 75%) on behalf of just one individual. This is likely connected to the EEOC's lack of a quorum; large-scale "class" cases require a Commission vote, and the EEOC currently does not have the pieces in place to make such moves. This is explained in more detail below.
- Timing: Another aspect of our analysis concerns the average timing of an EEOC investigation and lawsuit, i.e., how many days typically spent in conciliation, and how many days typically elapse between a failed conciliation and a lawsuit filing. In FY 2024, the EEOC spent an average of 80 days in conciliation, and another 116 days between the notice of conciliation failure and the filing of a complaint. In FY 2025, the average time spent in conciliation was roughly the same (83 days), but in contrast to FY 2024, the EEOC took an average of 205 days from a failed conciliation before it filed a complaint in FY 2025.
Returning to the issue of the generally narrower scope of the claims filed this year, the absence of a quorum constrains the EEOC. When, as now, there is not a quorum of Commissioners, the General Counsel has power under an earlier delegation of authority to file routine cases. However, the delegation of authority does not extend to filing cases involving: allegations of systemic discrimination; allegations of pattern or practice discrimination; major expenditures of agency resources, including staffing and staff time, or expenses associated with extensive discovery or expert witnesses; positions contrary to precedent in the Circuit in which the case will be filed; and other cases reasonably believed to be appropriate for approval by the Commission, e.g., cases that implicate areas of the law that are not settled and cases that are likely to generate public controversy. The class and collective claims filed as FY 25 drew to a close may cross those lines, inviting challenges to the Agency's ability to litigate the cases.
Implications For Employers
While FY 2025 was another quiet year in terms of EEOC litigation, a close analysis of the EEOC's strategic litigation decisions can help employers identify key compliance areas going forward. For instance, although the EEOC under the Trump Administration is unlikely to pursue LGBTQ-related litigation, the Commission remains focused on protecting employees' religious rights and vigorously enforcing pregnancy discrimination laws in the workplace. Moreover, while the EEOC has traditionally focused its litigation efforts on larger corporations, the EEOC's FY 2025 filing activity demonstrated its willingness to sue smaller regional businesses and even local government entities. It is also evident that employers in the healthcare industry—as well as those in the Chicago, Indianapolis, and Philadelphia regions—should be particularly careful with respect to EEOC investigations potentially evolving into litigation.
Finally, EEOC activity should not be viewed in a vacuum. The private plaintiff's bar often follows in the path cut by the EEOC. Anecdotally, we already see this "follow-the-leader" phenomenon by private litigants in courts around the country. Employers should view these trends not merely as a question of whether the EEOC will noisily target certain areas, but the vulnerabilities to private litigation that follow increased attention and focus on issues highlighted by the EEOC.
We will continue to monitor these changes closely and keep readers apprised of developments. And, as always, we will keep up-to-date on EEOC data amid the ever-changing political climate and another quiet year at the Commission.
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