Employment risks rarely arrive without warning. More often, they emerge gradually through court decisions, regulatory actions and shifts in enforcement priorities. Individually, those developments may seem incremental, but as a whole, they can significantly alter the risk landscape for employers.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s recent decision to replace the prior administration’s enforcement framework with a new National Enforcement Plan (NEP) represents one such shift. While much of the public discussion surrounding the Plan has focused on its approach to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, the Commission’s substantive priorities extend beyond DEI and include issues such as anti-American national origin discrimination, religious liberty and sex-based rights and protections.
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In addition to the Commission’s priorities, Chair Andrea Lucas has also identified several substantive “Chair Priorities,” which include remedying DEI-related race and sex discrimination, protecting American workers from anti-American national origin discrimination, defending women’s rights to single-sex spaces at work, workers’ rights to express the binary nature of sex, and protecting workers’ religious liberty rights.
The Commission’s priorities are not merely theoretical. Since January 2025, the EEOC has pursued a range of enforcement measures, including litigation, negotiated resolutions,...
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