Federal employees facing sexual harassment and other forms of discrimination are currently blocked from collectively seeking relief before the federal government’s anti-discrimination agency, some workers alleged in a lawsuit filed Tuesday.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has paused adjudication of class-action discrimination cases brought by federal workers against their employing agencies, according to the complaint filed in the U.S. District Court in Washington, which accused the agency of flouting its fundamental responsibilities.
Deanee Chelette is a Bureau of Prisons employee who works as a correctional officer at the Federal Correctional Institution in Pollock, Louisiana, and a plaintiff in the lawsuit. She is a member of a certified class-action case currently before EEOC alleging widespread sexual harassment against women that management failed to address. According to that case, male inmates routinely exposed themselves, masturbated and made rape threats in front of female employees. Management is aware of the situation and has not taken meaningful steps to improve it, the complainants have alleged.
In December, an EEOC administrative judge issued a notice that all processing in the case was suspended and any deadlines and appearances were canceled.
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“This notification applies to all class cases in the federal sector, including those alleging disparate impact,” the judge said.
Plaintiffs, represented by the American Federation of Government Employees, asked the court to deem the pause unlawful and compel EEOC to resume processing of class complaints.
“While the class case remains suspended, women employed at FCC Pollock continue to suffer daily sexual harassment that materially and adversely affects their working conditions, without a forum in which to obtain relief,” they said.
AFGE attested that it has hundreds of cases before EEOC, though thousands more are caught up in the pause. Claimants in the Pollock case estimated that 182 women are in the class after eight submitted declarations and the bureau acknowledged that at least 50 women had filed incident reports.
“The EEOC’s decision to suspend federal-sector class complaints undermines the fundamental right of employees to seek justice,” said Taryn Wilgus Null, an attorney at Democracy Defenders Fund, one of the law firms that filed the case on AFGE’s behalf. “By failing to process these cases, the commission is abandoning workers and disregarding its mandate to uphold the rule of law.
The complaint alleged that EEOC is violating the Administrative Procedure Act for taking actions that are “arbitrary and capricious.” Specifically, the agency failed to follow its own regulations, implementing a blanket policy without explanation and unreasonably delaying action that it is required by law to take, the complaint alleged.
EEOC did not respond to a request for comment.
The agency has not stated any reason for the pause nor suggested when it would end, according to the plaintiffs. While the pause remains in effect, the plaintiffs, claimants cannot complete discovery, obtain a hearing or decision or secure injunctive relief.
The 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination in federal employment and requires the EEOC to take “necessary and appropriate” steps to enforce that ban. The commission has, through regulation, created a comprehensive procedure for processing and adjudicating both individual and class complaints of such discrimination.
The plaintiffs suggested that the delays would hurt their cases as “witnesses become unavailable, memories fade and documents become more difficult to locate.”
“Justice delayed is justice denied, and the EEOC’s refusal to act on these class-action complaints is causing direct harm and personal injury to our members,” said AFGE President Everett Kelley.
In its Project 2025 blueprint, the Heritage Foundation suggested that EEOC should no longer hear complaints from federal employees and that those responsibilities should instead be transferred to the Merit Systems Protection Board.
In an unprecedented move, Trump fired the commission’s Democratic members, Charlotte Burrows and Jocelyn Samuels, a week after taking office. The agency last week moved to cease its collection of workplace demographic data, a shift that critics said would undermine the enforcement of anti-discrimination laws.
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