The EEOC closed fiscal year 2026 on September 30, and three published accounts of its lawsuit docket do not agree on the count or on what it means. HR Dive relayed a Seyfarth Shaw tally of 97 merit suits and called the year “historically anemic”. Duane Morris counted 99 and wrote that the agency “has stabilized its litigation program”. Read together with the agency’s own figures, they point at a different place for HR teams to look.
What each account says
HR Dive, in a piece by editor Emilie Shumway, builds on Seyfarth’s analysis. The agency filed 97 merit lawsuits in FY 2026 against 93 the year before, a small rise after observers had expected an explosion of litigation. HR Dive ties the quiet to a January rule change that lets the Washington, D.C. commission “commence or intervene” in almost all litigation, a head count drop it describes as most pronounced in the East, West and Southwest, and a more targeted filing pattern. Its headline pairs the thin docket with heavy messaging.
Duane Morris reads the same year as steadier ground. Its authors, Gerald Maatman, Jennifer Riley, Daniel Spencer and Alex Karasik, count 99 filings against 94 in FY 2025, and set both against 111 in FY 2024, 143 in FY 2023 and a peak of 217 in FY 2018. Their frame is a program that has levelled off after several years of swings.
The third account is Seyfarth’s own writing. In a September 1 article on the EEOC’s FY 2026 to 2030 strategic plan, its attorneys Andrew Scroggins, Samantha Brooks and Christopher DeGroff point to a 90 percent floor for favorable resolution of enforcement lawsuits and conclude that “the EEOC will be selective about the cases it files”. Seyfarth’s 2026 edition of its EEOC litigation report adds that the FY 2025 total of 93 was a record low, with about 75 percent of those suits brought on behalf of one individual.
HR Dive and Seyfarth are not fully independent on the count, because HR Dive’s 97 comes from Seyfarth. Duane Morris is the separate tally.
Where the accounts split
The first split is the number itself, 97 against 99. The sources do not say why they differ, and counting method is the likely reason. The second split is in the detail underneath. HR Dive reports 38 ADA suits and 29 pregnancy- or sex-based suits out of the 97. Duane Morris reports 33 disability suits and 16 pregnancy suits, and says Pregnant Workers Fairness Act filings doubled from 6 to 12. September filings differ too: HR Dive, citing Seyfarth, reports 29 suits that month, while Duane Morris reports 24, down from 35 in September 2025.
The third split is the verdict. HR Dive and Seyfarth stress restraint and selection. Duane Morris stresses that the count rose from 94 and that the mix shifted. Its authors write that “the return of Retail as a primary enforcement target marks one of the most significant shifts in this year’s data”, with retail at 22.5 percent of filings against 11.3 percent in FY 2025, and healthcare falling from 21.3 percent to 13.8 percent. HR Dive points instead to religion: 16 of the 52 Title VII suits it counts, a category that usually draws far less attention.
Where the accounts overlap is selection. HR Dive and Seyfarth describe an agency choosing its cases, and Duane Morris describes a program that has settled at a lower level than the 217 suits of FY 2018.
The detail that sits outside the docket
Every one of these accounts measures the EEOC by lawsuits. The agency does not. Its April 6 release on its FY 2025 results reports $660 million recovered for 17,680 people, and $528 million of that came through pre-litigation enforcement, which the agency calls the highest figure in its 60-year history. Litigation produced $27 million for 2,505 people. By our arithmetic, about 80 percent of FY 2025 recoveries arrived before any suit was filed and about 4 percent came from lawsuits.
The same release counts 88,201 new charges in FY 2025. Set against 93 lawsuits, that is roughly one suit for every 950 charges. Both figures are from FY 2025, and none of the three accounts reports FY 2026 recoveries or charge counts, so the comparison is ours and the FY 2026 version is not yet available in what we reviewed.
Chair Andrea Lucas framed the release around results. “I am pleased to highlight the EEOC’s results for American workers during the first year of the second Trump Presidency,” she said in the agency’s statement.
HR Dive supplies the mechanism that links the thin docket to the large pre-litigation total. Scroggins and his colleague James Nasiri, an associate at Seyfarth, describe an agency that now announces conciliation agreements that are “confidential by statute”, which may mean employers agree to the publicity, and that has announced subpoena enforcement actions more often than in the past. Nasiri said of Lucas: “She’s clearly trying to put the message out there, express their priorities”. Scroggins added that the messaging can signal priorities to employers and to their own employees.
Our read: the docket shows the smallest share of the work
Our through-line, and it is ours rather than any of the three accounts’, is that the lawsuit count tells HR leaders about the agency’s agenda and little about their own exposure. A charge that ends in mediation or conciliation never reaches a docket, and Seyfarth’s strategic plan reading suggests the cases that do reach one are the ones the agency expects to win.
That matters for how HR teams budget attention. A team that watches the filing tally sees a quiet agency. A team that watches the intake desk sees 88,201 charges a year and an enforcement process that mostly resolves them early. The staffing signal in HR Dive cuts the same way. Scroggins said that on the East Coast he keeps “seeing the same lawyers over and over in all of these cases, and they’re stretched very, very thin”. Thin staffing narrows how many suits the agency can file, and it also raises the value of a charge that arrives with its facts organised.
The cases we have covered fit this pattern. The agency’s move to rescind its criminal-records guidance changed the paper, and the legal duties underneath stayed. Its disability suits now begin at the offer stage, which is where a hiring workflow is most automated and least reviewed. And its pregnancy suits keep returning to leave policy, a category Duane Morris shows growing.
What it means for the HR leader
Treat the charge, not the complaint filed in court, as the unit of risk. Four steps follow from the three accounts and the agency’s figures.
- Track the charge file. Know how many EEOC charges your organisation received in the last year, which basis each cited, and how each ended. If you cannot answer in an hour, the process is the first fix.
- Map your exposure to the filings that grew. Retail, religious accommodation, pregnancy and the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act all rose in at least one account.
- Check the hiring flow. Offer-stage decisions on medical and physical requirements are where recent suits begin, and automated screens often sit exactly there.
- Decide in advance who may agree to a conciliation that the agency then announces. On HR Dive’s account, publicity may be part of the negotiation, so legal, communications and HR need one answer before a charge arrives.
The practical test for the coming year is whether your records can answer a charge within the agency’s deadlines, and whether your leadership has agreed what a public settlement would say. The EEOC’s FY 2026 recovery figures, when published, will show whether the pre-litigation share held.
