The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) released its annual Performance and Accountability Report on November 19, 2015, reporting record results in the agency’s enforcement efforts during fiscal year 2015.  The report, which numbers over 100 pages, relates numerous instances of progress the EEOC made in 2015, its 50^th year of operation, including that it:

• Successfully secured over $525 million for victims of discrimination in private, state and local government, and federal workplaces;
• Resolved 268 systemic investigations before filing litigation, obtaining more than $33.5 million in remedies (systemic cases address patterns or practices of discrimination or policies that have a broad impact on a region, industry, or a group of employees or job applicants);
• Reached 336,855 people through participation in 3,700 no-cost educational, training, and outreach events throughout the year. The EEOC’s national Training Institute trained over 12,000 individuals at events that focused on the agency’s Strategic Enforcement Plan priorities, including small businesses, vulnerable workers, underserved geographic areas and communities, and emphasized new statutory responsibilities, issues related to migrant workers, human trafficking and youth;
• Achieved record success in its conciliation of private-sector charges, successfully resolving 44% of conciliations and having 64% of systemic investigations voluntarily resolved. These achievements led to a 6% increase in charge resolutions, even as workers filed more charges of discrimination compared to 2014;
• Filed 142 lawsuits alleging discrimination, including 100 individual suits and 42 suits involving multiple victims or discriminatory policies.  The EEOC’s legal staff resolved 155 lawsuits alleging discrimination, and at the end of the year, the EEOC had 218 cases on its active docket, of which 22% involved challenges to systemic discrimination and 18% were multiple-victim cases; and
• Resolved 6,360 hearings complaints in its federal sector program and secured more than $94.9 million in relief for federal employees. The EEOC also resolved 3,850 appeals of agency decisions on federal sector complaints, including 42.4% of them within 180 days of receipt, and secured more than $10.7 million in relief.

The 2015 Performance and Accountability Report is posted on the agency’s website; comprehensive enforcement and litigation statistics for 2015 will be available on the agency’s website in the near future.