Investigators are rapidly closing out claims of workplace discrimination so that they can search for the kinds of cases chair Andrea Lucas most wants to find.
Earlier this year, Sebrina, a direct-care worker in Pennsylvania who works in group homes assisting clients with disabilities with everyday tasks, was discussing a client’s medications with a coworker. When she told her coworker that one of the clients does in fact need seizure medications, despite her coworker’s claim to the contrary, the coworker called Sebrina a “bitch,” she recalled. Another time, that same coworker called her “colored.”
Sebrina, who asked to use only her first name because she’s in the middle of legal action, reported the incidents, as well as the fact that one of her clients told her that he was being abused by a different caretaker, to her boss. That’s when she was abruptly suspended. She was accused of not following instructions for a particular client, but she says she had been begging to get the relevant instructions for months to no avail. Meanwhile, the coworker who called her the slurs was simply told to apologize to her. Eventually Sebrina was fired on July 13 for, she says, failing to attend a meeting scheduled for July 18.
On June 29, Sebrina filed an inquiry with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency tasked with protecting private-sector workers from discrimination, claiming she had been illegally discriminated against. An agency investigator started looking into it on August 14. When an EEOC investigator investigates a case, they typically spend months probing whether the case has merit, soliciting the employer’s response and gathering documents to either pursue an EEOC lawsuit or help the employee do so. Instead, five days later the agency sent Sebrina a “right-to-sue” letter, which closed out the EEOC case without any investigation and left her to pursue justice in the courts. “It just happened so fast,” Sebrina said. “I wanted him to investigate.” Instead, she was on her own with no more information than when she had started.
Three sources within the EEOC, plus three employment lawyers who regularly bring claims to the agency, told The Nation that what Sebrina experienced is increasingly common. Their comments and statements from the agency’s chair demonstrate that under the second Trump administration, the EEOC, created by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, has focused on representing aggrieved white men and people with anti-trans complaints while shutting out those whom it has historically served. Since she was appointed to lead the EEOC by President Donald Trump, chair Andrea Lucas has increased pressure on agency staff to field far more inquiries without growing the backlog of cases, three agency sources tell The Nation. At the same time, she’s pushed them to spend disproportionate resources on her personal priorities. The combination of those factors means that more and more people are experiencing what Sebrina did: Investigators in EEOC field offices are rapidly closing out claims of workplace discrimination without thoroughly investigating them so that they can search for and sink time into the kinds of cases Lucas most wants to find.
Democrats in Congress can hold hearings and bring Lucas in to testify about her priorities, but they aren’t empowered to change agency policies. In fact, Trump is expected to soon nominate Matt Zandi, who most recently served as chief of staff to Harmeet Dhillon, until recently the head of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, as an EEOC commissioner, which will give the Republican members of the commission a quorum and majority for at least two more years. It would also allow President Trump to fire the remaining Democratic commissioner, Kalpana Kotagal, as he did with the other two Democratic commissioners, while still maintaining enough members for Lucas to set the agency’s rules and agenda.
Workers get only 90 days after receiving an EEOC right-to-sue letter to file a case in court. Sebrina spent sleepless nights googling and scouring TikTok and YouTube for someone who might take her case in time. “Any and everything,” she said. Over 20 attorneys turned her down. “I cried,” she said. “My little baby saying, ‘Mom, you got to close your eyeballs or they’re going to dry.’” With just 30 days left, she decided to go pro se and try to file the paperwork in court on her own, but she had to figure out how to get the $200 filing fee waived. Her blood pressure was sky-high from the stress; her psychiatrist recently advised her to take a break to protect her mental health. “I’m just trying to stop the timer from ticking,” she said. “It’s just a lot that’s dropped on me.”
Early last year, Lucas created a list of her own personal priorities for the EEOC—including claims from people who believe they were adversely affected in the workplace by so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, such as white men who believe a woman or person of color unfairly got a promotion instead of them, and claims that are “defending the biological and binary reality of sex,” such as cisgender women who feel discriminated against for sharing a bathroom with a trans woman—and told agency officials to seek out cases that lined up with them. Prior EEOC commissioners said that violated the agency’s processes and exceeded her authority. Lucas has also prioritized religious bias and national-origin discrimination against American citizens who believe a foreign-born person unfairly got an opportunity instead of them. She posted a direct-to-camera video on X.com last year soliciting complaints from anyone who is “a white male who has experienced discrimination at work.”
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In response to a request for comment, an EEOC spokesperson, “Under Chair Lucas’s leadership, the EEOC continues to deliver significant results for American workers.”
The EEOC, which has a budget of just $455 million to cover the country’s 136 million private-sector employees, has always had to prioritize some complaints over others. Before Lucas became chair, however, those priorities were determined by looking at data showing what kinds of discrimination were most prevalent, an EEOC staffer with knowledge said. “Historically, people of color and women file the greatest number of charges, because they disproportionately face discrimination in the workplace,” so those complaints were prioritized (though the EEOC has always pursued discrimination claims of all kinds). Now the determination is driven by the administration’s political priorities. But the focus on white men, for example, is “not what our body of data reflects,” the EEOC employee said.
According to The New York Times, cases from white men claiming so-called reverse discrimination have been “accelerated through the process,” and the director of at least one district (the EEOC divides the country into 15 districts) told staff that such cases should be designated as deserving the highest level of resources and time. The director also said that such cases can’t be sent to mediation—a process in which the EEOC helps try to broker a settlement—and require “special permission” to dismiss. The EEOC employee I spoke with has heard from people directly involved that Lucas has fought back against staff attempts to reach settlements in these cases because she instead wants to bring litigation. Cases involving DEI and gender identity are getting extra resources, the EEOC employee said, and are all being assigned attorneys. Lucas herself has gotten far more actively involved in them than previous chairs would get in specific cases, according to the EEOC staffer with knowledge.
And yet staff told the Times that they have struggled to find complaints Lucas wants that have merit or strong evidence. That requires them to spend even more time trying to put a flimsy case together. So complaints without merit that fall into Lucas’s priorities are now supplanting other kinds with merit, the staffer with knowledge said, and staff is focusing on the demographics of who filed the complaint instead of whether the complaint itself is worthy.
In addition to being directed to find cases that Lucas wants to focus on, expectations for field staff have been raised to unrealistic levels, the EEOC employee said. Beginning October 1, Lucas directed EEOC investigators in the agency’s field offices to complete five intake appointments every day, two EEOC staffers said. An effective intake typically takes an hour and a half to two hours to complete, the staffer with knowledge said. At the same time, Lucas and Thomas Colclough, the EEOC’s director of field management, have told the directors of the agency’s field offices that anyone who walks through their office doors must be served. The change appears at least in part to be Lucas’s attempt to make it easier for white men to access the agency. Lucas herself has assured people on X.com alleging the kind of discrimination she’s focused on that they can walk into EEOC field offices and get quick responses. In one post, she said she was “aware of & working to increase our interview availability.” In another, she said she was working on ensuring that “all field offices are equally welcoming and available to walk-in appointments.” Prior to Lucas’s becoming chair, goals for the number of intakes completed each day were set by each local field office based on their capacity, and most workers had to get initial online appointments to ensure that there was enough staff capacity for each. Outside of rare instances, employees have never before been asked to do five a day, the staffer with knowledge said.
In response to a request for comment, an EEOC spokesperson said, “Chair Lucas is proud of the agency’s efforts to serve more workers by expanding intake appointments and walk-in availability. In Fiscal Year 2026, charge inquiries reached an all-time high, while charge receipts increased 11 percent—the highest level in more than a decade. These results underscore the growing demand for the EEOC’s services and the importance of Chair Lucas’s commitment to evenhanded enforcement, expanded outreach, and ensuring all American workers understand their rights under federal civil rights laws.”
All the extra time diverted to intakes is less time that staff can spend investigating inquiries and charges or developing promising cases to litigate. “People are spending so much time putting out the immediate fires,” the EEOC employee said.
Meanwhile, staffing is at a nadir. The agency received 270,000 inquiries last fiscal year, a 9 percent increase over 2024, but it had the lowest number of staff to handle that work since at least 2005. Staffing has continued to decrease this year—the agency has just 1,693 employees to police discrimination in all private workplaces, a 26 percent decrease from its peak under President Joe Biden and down by a third since a high-water mark in 2010. Just a few hundred of those employees are the investigators who both handle new inquiries and investigate them if they become actual charges.
At the same time, aggressive goals have been put in place for making sure the backlog of inquiries and charges doesn’t grow beyond a certain length, the EEOC staffer with knowledge said, even as employees are being forced to field more inquiries. That’s led to a mass closure of inquiries—in which EEOC investigators don’t even look into a complaint and simply issue a right-to-sue letter—and the neglect of complaints with merit or even the potential to make systematic change.
“Staff are closing charges in order to meet the goals, in order to keep the inventory [of pending inquiries and charges] artificially low,” the EEOC employee said. “The agency has become sort of a right-to-sue machine.”
The impact on Americans who have experienced discrimination at work has been stark. Steve Auerbach, founding attorney at the Law Office of Steven T. Auerbach, and Rachel McElroy, an attorney at the McElroy Law Firm, say that clients have received right-to-sue letters before the agency has even asked their employers for a position statement, which is typically the first step in assessing all inquiries. Charges Auerbach has filed with the agency have been closed out incredibly rapidly. “We’re looking at days, when in the past it was months, if not longer,” he said. “It was rare for me to even hear back for six months.” One inquiry that he filed in mid-June was issued a right-to-sue letter 18 days later; another filed in early August got one in just eight days. McElroy has similarly seen clients get right-to-sue letters in a matter of weeks, while a previous case waited years.
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Beginning last year, Nathan Simmons, an attorney at Kaplan Law Firm, would file an inquiry only to receive an e-mail demanding more information—information that had already been included in his inquiry on behalf of his client. The agency has sometimes ignored his response and then immediately issued a right-to-sue letter. “The new policy completely undermines the purpose of the EEOC,” he said.
“I can’t rely on them to do their job right now,” Auerbach said of the EEOC. And, he said, it’s happening even to cases that appear to have merit. “I’m seeing it in instances where it’s both clear-cut and a pretty good case,” he added. McElroy agreed that the cases getting closed out are surprising. “They’re just your average EEOC charges,” she said.
Both Auerbach and McElroy have simultaneously experienced a huge increase in calls from workers seeking legal help after being quickly issued a right-to-sue letter by the agency—the week we spoke, McElroy had gotten three, when before she would only get such calls “every once in a while.” Auerbach called it “frightening” given that workers only get 90 days to file a lawsuit after getting such a letter.
Even when the EEOC decides not to take a case, its investigation is a crucial component of getting justice for employees. Auerbach noted that he’s reluctant to file a lawsuit without having heard the employer’s side of the story—something the agency is skipping over now as it scrambles to issue right-to-sue letters. “I’m counting on that to see if this is a meritorious claim, and I’m being deprived of that,” he said. “Not every dispute belongs in front of a federal jury.” Meanwhile, without the agency’s having done any investigation of a charge, attorneys must compile all the necessary documents and evidence before the 90-day window closes, which is not always possible.
It’s already difficult for workers to find an employment lawyer to take a case like this. First, there just aren’t enough of them. “A lot of the big billboard attorneys, they’re personal injury attorneys and medical malpractice attorneys,” McElroy pointed out. There are far fewer lawyers who take civil rights cases, and those that exist can only take on so many cases at a time. Many won’t respond to every call that comes into their office.
Many workers also can’t afford to take their employers to court on their own, even if they can find lawyers. Few workers who represent themselves get a favorable ruling. If the EEOC isn’t even looking into whether to pursue their cases itself, they may end up with no recourse in a worthy case. “To be shut out and ignored by the agency that’s congressionally tasked with listening to them,” Auerbach said, “it’s insult to injury.”
“Workers that are most in need of the agency’s services can’t in fact benefit from those services and get left behind,” the EEOC employee said. “If you have no actual way to enforce your civil rights, are they meaningful?”
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