Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Hits Record Highs for Charge Volume, Litigation and Monetary Relief for Claimants
For the second year in a row, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC" or the "Commission") received a record-breaking number of private sector charges of discrimination, with 99,947 charges filed in 2011. To help put that figure into perspective, the EEOC received over 31 percent more charges in 2011 than it did just five years earlier in 2006. However, the 2011 charge volume was virtually unchanged over 2010, when the EEOC received only 25 fewer charges. While the increase over the 2010 charge volume is not significant, the EEOC’s charge and litigation statistics do reflect a continued trend of increasing charge volume, as well as the Commission’s continued focus on mediation and litigation of charges.
In 2011, the EEOC obtained a record-shattering $455.6 million in relief for private sector claimants through mediation and litigation, which represents a more than $51 million increase over 2010. The EEOC’s mediation program reached record levels, both in terms of the number of resolutions and the amount of benefits obtained. In 2011, the EEOC’s mediation efforts led to agreements to pay more than $170 million in benefits, an increase of $28 million over 2010. Additionally, the EEOC filed 300 lawsuits in 2011 (up from 271 in 2010), which have so far resulted in $91 million in benefits to claimants. Notably, 2011 is the third consecutive year in which the EEOC increased the amount of benefits obtained for claimants through litigation.
The 2011 statistics also reflect the EEOC’s more recent focus on charges involving multiple claimants and/or alleging systemic discrimination. In its 2012-2016 Draft Strategic Plan, the EEOC explained that systemic discrimination cases involve a pattern, practice, or policy of alleged discrimination that has a broad impact on an industry, profession, company, or geographic area. The Commission also articulated its strategy of making attacks on alleged systemic discrimination a top priority, and its plan to increase the volume of multi-claimant and systemic discrimination cases on its litigation docket each year through 2016. This focus is already reflected in the 2011 statistics—of the 300 lawsuits filed by the EEOC in 2011, 23 involved allegations of systemic discrimination and another 67 involved multiple claimants.
The 2011 statistics also identify trends in the kinds of claims asserted by claimants. Just as in 2010, retaliation claims were the most numerous, representing 37.4 percent of all charges filed. Race discrimination was the second most commonly asserted claim, but overall, claims of race discrimination actually decreased slightly in 2011, as did claims of sex discrimination. However, charges of discrimination based upon age, disability, national origin, and religion all increased in 2011. The increase in disability discrimination claims was reflected not just in the 2011 charge volume statistics, but also in the monetary relief obtained for claimants—enforcement of the Americans with Disabilities Act produced the highest increase in monetary relief (35.9 percent more than 2010) among all of the statutes enforced by the EEOC. Finally, in its first full year of enforcing the Genetic Information Non-Disclosure Act ("GINA"), which prohibits discrimination of the basis of genetic information, including family history, the Commission received 245 charges, compared to 201 GINA charges filed in 2010.