My EEOC Charge is 1 in 90,000 – EEOC Fiscal Year 2018 Enforcement and Litigation Data

April 18, 2019

On April 10, 2019, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) released detailed breakdowns of its work in fiscal year 2018 which ended on September 30, 2018. You can find details on its website but some remarkable statistics are as follows:

  • Received 76,418 charges of workplace discrimination

  • Resolved 90,558 charges of discrimination (including those filed in prior years)

  • Secured $505 million for victims in private sector, state and local government, and federal workplaces

  • Handled over 519,000 calls to its toll-free number, 34,600 emails and more than 200,000 inquiries in field offices

  • Filed 199 merits lawsuits alleging discrimination, including 117 individual suits and 45 suits involving multiple victims or discrimin­atory policies and 37 systemic discrimination cases

  • Achieved a successful outcome in 95.7 percent of all district court resolutions

Often, people inquire whether the #MeToo movement spurred more legal disputes. EEOC data demonstrates this was indeed the case. The agency also received 7,609 sexual harassment charges – a 13.6 percent increase from FY 2017 – and obtained $56.6 million in monetary benefits for victims of sexual harassment.

However, leading the pack as the most frequently alleged basis of discrimination with 51.6% of all charges filed, was “retaliation”, followed by “sex”, then “disability” then “race”, then “age”.