The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), like the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), is a federal administrative agency whose agenda and priorities change with the whims of the current sitting president. Last year in this space, Laura Rubenstein outlined the aggressive new agenda being pushed by the then-Acting Chair.

Fifteen months later, the EEOC approved its National Enforcement Plan, setting forth the agency’s plans through FY2029. Sure enough, stated priorities include all of the current conservative movement’s hot button talking points, including “remedying DEI-related race and sex discrimination;” “protecting American workers from anti-American national origin discrimination;” and “defending women’s rights to single-sex spaces at work and workers’ rights to express the binary nature of sex.”

So, in sum – no great surprises in the Plan. It does beg the question, though: how much of the EEOC’s big talk is just that – talk? Take, for example, data provided by the EEOC for FY2025. The agency’s own reporting says that the litigation categories reported for FY2025 were still dominated by sex/pregnancy, disability, and retaliation; only two race and two national origin suits were filed that year by the EEOC.

If the agency were fully executing new enforcement realignment around DEI, anti-American bias, etc., you would have expected the FY2025 case mix to reflect that. It doesn’t appear that the situation will be much different in FY2026 either; a quick skim down recent EEOC press releases doesn’t reveal an agency actively pursuing lawsuits or remedying alleged DEI. The EEOC made headlines last year by sending letters to 20 law firms demanding information about DEI-related practices; quietly, thereafter, the agency relented and admitted the demands were in fact voluntary requests. The Agency filed a May 2026 lawsuit against the New York Times alleging DEI-related race and sex discrimination, but that could just as easily be seen as a piece of political theater, a continuance of President Trump’s decade-plus war with the company.

Employers should not rest on their haunches. Nobody wants to be a guinea pig. But the bottom line is that, while the EEOC has talked a big game, it is still an agency largely litigating the same familiar categories --  sex, pregnancy, disability, retaliation – while its new stated culture-war priorities have yet to actually take center stage.

To discuss your questions about your workplace policies, please reach out to an RKW attorney at www.RKWlawgroup.com.