The Equal Employment Opportunities Commission has released a new National Enforcement Plan for 2025-2029 which replaces the Biden Administration plan previously in place. The plan is intended to guide the EEOC’s work through all of the agency’s activities, including outreach, public education, technical assistance, enforcement, and litigation. The new enforcement rules require treating employees as individuals and replacing diversity-based programs for hiring, layoffs, and promotions.

The NEP identifies several categories of substantive priorities, including cases that present a substantial likelihood of broader impact beyond the parties involved, including repeated, overt, or facially discriminatory policies, practices, and programs and intentional discrimination resulting from broad-based employment policies, programs, or practices.

The plan says the EEOC must function as a national law enforcement agency. As part of the executive branch of government, the EEOC will use its discretion in its deployment of its enforcement authority to advance the Administration’s policy objectives and comply with relevant Executive Orders.

Specifically, the agency will not pursue “disparate impact” claims of discrimination where certain groups received less favorable treatment as a result of neutral, non-intentional employer policies or programs. Intentional disparate treatment cases will receive priority, however.

The EEOC will prioritize cases in a number of areas, including:

1. Job advertisements that, on account of a protected characteristic, exclude or discourage certain individuals from applying, or encourage certain individuals to apply, including, but not limited to, based on race (e.g., black, Hispanic, Asian, white, male, female, or “diverse candidates” or other terms that are, or functionally operate, as race-based) or national origin (e.g., “guest worker visa holders” or “PERM applicants”);

2. Staffing agencies, including fellowship or other similar programs, that act as a staffing agency, that exclude individuals from employment on account of a protected characteristic;

3. Channeling, steering, or segregating individuals into specific jobs or job duties based on protected characteristics;

4. Company-wide policies or practices that run afoul of antidiscrimination employment laws such as mass denials of accommodations; and

5. Systemic harassment.

The agency also said it would prosecute policies, programs, or practices that preference guest worker visa holders or PERM applicants or those policies, programs, or practices labeled or framed as “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) or similar euphemisms, often adopted by large corporations, prominent universities, and other elite institutions. This could involve race- or sex-based quotas, including practices labeled “aspirational goals” that are proxies for quotas or otherwise encourage or incentivize race- and sex-based decision making, in any employment action, in interviewing; hiring; staffing a particular project/client teams; layoffs; and promotions.