The pendulum is about to swing at the EEOC. Are you ready?

On January 21, the day after President Trump designated Andrea Lucas as Acting Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Commission issued a press release describing Ms. Lucas’s priorities as including the following:

Rooting out unlawful DEI-motivated race and sex discrimination; protecting American workers from anti-American national origin discrimination; defending the biological and binary reality of sex and related rights, including women’s rights to single sex spaces at work; protecting workers from religious bias and harassment, including antisemitism; and remedying other areas of recent under-enforcement.

Implementing these priorities was stymied for most of 2025 due to the absence of a quorum at the five-person Commission.

But on October 7, the Senate confirmed Republican Brittany Panuccio as the third EEOC Commissioner.

Yahtzee! That makes a quorum. And now President Trump has removed the “Acting” designation and named Ms. Lucas as Chair of the EEOC. Double Yahtzee!

No doubt about it. Religion and “America First” will be federal enforcement priorities for several years to come.

The importance of a quorum

The EEOC’s rules allow the Commission’s General Counsel the discretion to initiate “modest,” typically single-plaintiff, lawsuits without Commission approval.

But only the Commission, acting with a quorum, can make rules, issue formal guidance and initiate “major” litigation, which typically involves claims of systemic discrimination or pattern-or-practice discrimination, or claims likely to generate public controversy.

In deciding whether to pursue “major” litigation, the Commissioners consider the nature of the violation, the issues presented, and their wider impact on the EEOC’s efforts to combat workplace discrimination.

That last factor often includes attention-grabbing, splashy EEOC press releases that identify the (allegedly) offending employer.

Although Chair Lucas’s priorities are a wake-up call for large corporate employers, smaller ones will be affected by the trickle-down effect of her priorities on advocacy groups and the plaintiffs’ bar, neither of whom are limited to pursuing “major” litigation.

DEI-motivated race and sex discrimination

Taking Ms. Lucas at her word, the EEOC’s focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion should be on rooting out unlawful diversity-motivated discrimination. Put another way, the EEOC should not stand in the way of employers’ lawful efforts to promote diverse workforces.

According to the U.S. Supreme Court, there is nothing wrong with policies or practices aimed at fostering a diverse workforce, provided that they are non-discriminatory and do not favor members of one protected group over another.

As an employer, that means you should make sure your company’s policies and practices on recruiting, hiring, and promotion do not have the slightest suggestion that people of any particular race, sex, nationality, or other protected characteristic have an advantage over others. If you detect any such hints of discrimination, change your policies, or you could find yourself in the EEOC’s crosshairs.

Religious accommodation

Top 5 requests we’ll be seeing

During the next several years the EEOC is likely to use its enforcement and rulemaking powers to push religious accommodation to its furthest reaches.

Employers who deny a requested religious accommodation will be required to prove that granting it would have imposed an undue hardship on the business, which means proof of substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of the business.

If you haven’t thought about what that could entail, here are my “Top Five Accommodation Requests” that an employer may face in the coming years:

No. 5: Requests for time off for religious observance, like every Friday, Saturday or Sunday. The potential for conflicts between the employees seeking such accommodations and those who are affected are obvious, but generalized concerns about such conflicts are not enough to justify denying the requests.

No. 4: Social media posts predicated on religious beliefs. The permutations are endless, ranging from pro-life to pro-choice posts, and pro-Israel to pro-Palestine posts. Once again, it would be dangerous to prohibit such conduct based on generalized concerns about negative impacts on other employees or customers. In fact, the EEOC has filed a lawsuit on behalf of an employee who was terminated for faith-based social media posts that the company perceived to be potentially discriminatory to gay people.

No. 3: Employees who object, on religious grounds, to complying with employer policies regarding preferred pronouns.

No. 2: Employees who display religious symbols on their desks, on their person, or in their assigned workspaces.

No. 1: Employees or supervisors who proselytize, or express their religious beliefs (or lack thereof) and attempt to persuade others about the correctness of their beliefs (or lack of belief), during non-work time. If such conduct occurs and results in complaints, you will need to investigate and, if appropriate, take remedial action.

Knee-jerk reactions can be dangerous

Although the law demands neutrality with respect to race, sex (for the most part), national origin, and age, it provides favored status to religion, pregnancy and related conditions, and disabilities. And in all of these cases, accommodations could possibly have a negative impact on the business or co-workers.

But that doesn’t mean you don’t have to at least consider making the accommodations. If you deny a requested accommodation based on generalized concerns about negative impacts, you could be left with nothing more than a wing and a prayer if the denial results in a lawsuit.