On August 26, 2026, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) adopted an updated Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years 2026-2030. The EEOC’s new Strategic Plan establishes operational goals for implementation of the EEOC’s National Enforcement Plan (NEP) priorities, which was issued in June 2026. The Strategic Plan does not create new obligations, but it shows how the agency will prioritize its investigations, structure resolutions, and interact with employers through 2030. Together, the new NEP and Strategic Plan confirm a fundamental shift in how the EEOC will interpret and enforce federal anti-discrimination laws.
In step with the EEOC, private litigants are pushing some of the same themes in court.
Link to What the NEP Prioritizes What the NEP Prioritizes
The EEOC’s new NEP replaced the agency’s Biden-era Strategic Enforcement Plan, and includes a stated focus on:
- Abandoning disparate impact in favor of intentional discrimination claims, including challenges to broad-based policies that explicitly consider race or sex.
- Targeting certain DEI practices and omitting the prior plan’s diversity and inclusion commitments for the EEOC’s own hiring.
- Elevating religious accommodation and religious liberty protections, identifying anti-Christian bias specifically as a freestanding priority.
- “[P]rotecting American workers from alleged ‘anti-American’ national origin discrimination.”
- Emphasizing “defending women’s rights to single-sex spaces at work and workers’ rights to express [the] binary nature of sex.”
- Vulnerable workers, systemic harassment, and the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act liability.
The agency is already acting on these priorities as shown by EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas’ direct appeal in a video message posted on the social media platform X in December 2025 to white men, encouraging them to come forward if they believe they’ve been disadvantaged due to their sex or race; its March 2026 settlement with a Planned Parenthood affiliate to end the EEOC’s investigation of alleged harassment and discrimination against white people tied to the organization’s DEI efforts; the EEOC’s May 2026 suit against The New York Times on behalf of a white male employee; and its September 2026 settlement with a manufacturer employer to resolve an individual charge alleging the company violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 after it didn’t consider a reasonable accommodation when an employee requested to use “biological pronouns” for a transgender employee.
Link to Notable Strategic Plan Performance Measures Notable Strategic Plan Performance Measures
Of the new Strategic Plan’s 17 performance measures, several stand out for employers:
- Non-monetary relief. 97% of conciliation agreements and favorable litigation resolutions should include targeted, equitable relief, up from 90% under the prior plan. That can mean customized training, new policies, and external monitoring.
- Litigation success. At least 90% of enforcement lawsuits resolved favorably each year.
- Systemic enforcement. The Systemic Program will focus on matters involving ten or more aggrieved individuals. Notably, the final Plan dropped a draft target of at least $1 million in monetary relief in 80% of systemic cause findings.
- Compliance monitoring. Enhanced monitoring of conciliation agreements.
- Expanded outreach. 20 to 50 additional events per year for new partners, plus tracking of how charging parties learned of their right to file.
Although the Strategic Plan contemplates generative AI’s impact on hiring, AI appears in no performance measure.
Link to Private Litigants Are Pressing the Same Themes Private Litigants Are Pressing the Same Themes
Taking their cue from the EEOC, private litigants are also pursuing the EEOC’s priorities, including claims of bias against white and Christian Americans and challenges to transgender and nonbinary protections.
For example, in Olympus Spa v. Armstrong, the business, which operates two Korean spas in Washington where patrons are nude in communal areas, filed a lawsuit against the Washington State Human Rights Commission (WSHRC) alleging violations of its First Amendment rights. The spa maintained a policy that permitted only biological women and post-operative transgender women to access the spa’s services. A pre-operative transgender woman filed a complaint alleging discrimination under the Washington Law Against Discrimination (WLAD), and the WSHRC found that the policy violated the WLAD’s protections for gender identity. The Ninth Circuit upheld the district court’s finding in favor of the WSHRC and held that sex and gender identify are each protected under the WLAD. It also found that sex-based distinctions beyond bathroom separation are not permitted. The spa has appealed the decision to the United States Supreme Court, which may grant certiorari to hear the case this winter.
Religious accommodation claims are also gaining traction in court. On October 20, 2026, in Galbo v. Bay Ridge Preparatory School, the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York refused to dismiss a suit alleging that a Catholic school terminated an employee for refusing a Covid-19 vaccine. According to the plaintiff, the school denied her religious accommodation request and her proposed alternatives of telework, masking, and testing. When she was terminated, the plaintiff claimed that her religious views were a motivating factor, and that the school dismissed her beliefs as insincere. The court found her claims of religious discrimination plausible and noted that courts should not judge the “verity of an adherent’s religious beliefs” at the pleading stage.
Both Olympus Spa and Galbo are actively testing the same views that the NEP and the EEOC’s new Strategic Plan attempt to advance. In Olympus Spa, although not an employment case, it’s testing the notion that federal law must defend a woman’s right to single-sex spaces at work. And Galbo mirror’s the EEOC’s goal of elevating religious accommodation and liberty.
Link to What Employers Should Do Now What Employers Should Do Now
Through FY 2030, employers should expect NEP-priority charges to draw closer scrutiny and group-wide policies to carry systemic exposure. Employers should:
- Review and rework DEI programs for race- or sex-conscious practices like representation goals and diverse-slate mandates.
- Revisit religious accommodation procedures.
- Track state law, since policies built around federal priorities may create state-law exposure.
- Expect non-monetary terms such as training, policy changes, and monitoring in any resolution with the EEOC based on a charge or lawsuit
- Expect aggressive stances from private plaintiff’s counsel that mirror and take advantage of the EEOC’s new priorities.
We will continue to monitor these developments. Please contact a member of Ballard Spahr’s Labor and Employment Group with questions.