The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is responsible for eliminating all forms of discrimination in the workplace. Through development and passage of legislation, and its enforcement arm, the agency seeks to reverse the trend of discrimination based on race, color, national origin, sex, religion and retaliation, as well as age, gender, sexuality, genetics and physical ability. While its mission is designed to help make the American workplace free of trouble, EEOC’s own operations have sometimes suffered from problems. Recently, the commission moved its Washington, DC, office into a “transitional” neighborhood, much to the dismay of its employees, and it opened a national call center that had union and Democratic members of Congress quite upset.
In the early 1960s, there was growing unrest in the country about racial discrimination and segregation, which came to light as a result of the Civil Rights Movement. In the spring of 1963, demonstrators were attacked with dogs, sprayed with water hoses and arrested or jailed. On June 11, 1963, President John F. Kennedy addressed the nation, and eight days later, he sent new legislation to Congress. Opposition was fierce, but in August, 250,000 Americans marched in Washington, DC, and Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
In November, President Kennedy was assassinated, leaving the outcome of the civil rights legislation in doubt. But his successor, Lyndon Johnson, a veteran of Capitol Hill, took up the charge and utilized his well-honed legislative skills to push Congress into finishing what Kennedy had started.
On July 2, 1964, the Civil Rights Act was passed. Among its goals was the elimination of discrimination in the workplace through the creation of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 became the most famous aspect of the new legislation, prohibiting discrimination based on race, color, national origin, sex, religion and retaliation.
The newly created five-member bipartisan commission in charge of the EEOC was given the power to receive, investigate and conciliate complaints. Only individuals could bring lawsuits, which the EEOC could then refer to the Department of Justice for litigation.
In 1971, Congress conducted public hearings on proposed amendments to Title VII. It concluded that despite its best efforts, the EEOC had failed to stem discrimination. So Congress passed the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972, which gave the EEOC litigation enforcement authority. This allowed it to use dispute resolution between workers and employers, such as mediation.
The bill also expanded the EEOC’s jurisdiction. It could now sue nongovernmental employers, unions and agencies, file pattern or practice lawsuits, and eliminate inconsistencies among various federal programs. The 1970s saw increased activity for the EEOC, and by 1977, the agency had a backlog of 94,700 unresolved cases.
The Supreme Court’s Griggs decision, which recognized the indirect impact of discrimination, helped the agency expand its influence. In 1973, the EEOC established task forces to investigate General Electric, General Motors, Ford and Sears Roebuck. Under Title VII, “commissioner charges” were filed against these employers, and gained settlements for entire classes of victims of discrimination. This was followed by suits filed against nine of the nation’s largest steel producers in 1974, and other major actions against airlines, railroads, and construction and utility companies throughout the rest of the decade.
President Jimmy Carter expanded the power of the EEOC to enforce its rules, which required more changes to the agency. In 1978, Carter signed the Reorganization Plan No. 1 and Executive Order 12067 to consolidate and strengthen the enforcement of all federal equal employment requirements. The EEOC also issued the Uniform Guidelines in connection with the Departments of Labor and Justice, the Office of Revenue Sharing, and the Civil Service Commission. These established the same standards for evaluating selection procedures used in hiring and promoting employees for all employers—private sector employers, federal contractors and grantees, and federal, state, and local governments.
The rest of the 1980s saw the EEOC changing and reassessing its role in the country. It had recently received enforcement authority over the Equal Pay Act, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, and civil rights laws applicable to civilian federal employees. It also shifted its focus to the areas of age discrimination, sexual harassment and national origin bias.
On February 6, 2000, President Clinton issued Executive Order 13145, prohibiting discrimination in federal employment based on protected genetic information.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is charged with enforcing laws prohibiting job discrimination. Laws covered by the EEOC include: Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964; the Equal Pay Act of 1963; the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967; Title I and Title V of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990; Sections 501 and 505 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973; and the Civil Rights Act of 1991. The EEOC enforces these laws and others and provides oversight and coordination of all federal equal employment opportunity regulations, practices, and policies.
The EEOC has five commissioners and a general counsel appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Commissioners are appointed for five-year, staggered terms. The President designates a chair and a vice chair. The chair is the chief executive officer of the commission. Commissioners make equal employment opportunity policy and approve most litigation.
Litigation, the EEOC’s most important enforcement function, is carried out by the general counsel, who serves four years.
The EEOC has several initiatives it is currently undertaking. The E-RACE Initiative seeks to eradicate racism and “colorism” from employment. The Freedom to Compete Initiative is designed to form partnerships, liaisons, and alliances to educate the country’s workforce, deter potential discrimination and promote compliance and sound employment practices. The LEAD Initiative (Leadership for the Employment of Americans with Disabilities) is attempting to address the declining number of employees with targeted disabilities in the federal workforce. The New Freedom Initiative is supposed to promote the integration of people with disabilities into all aspects of American life. The Youth@Work Initiative seeks to promote equal employment opportunity for young workers.
The EEOC has spent nearly $357 million on 1,660 contractors this decade. According to USASpending.gov, the commission paid for a variety of services, from professional, administrative, and management support services to automatic data processing equipment.
The top 10 contractors were:
- State of California $22,267,830
- State of Ohio $16,030,671
- Commonwealth of Pennsylvania $12,131,530
- State of Illinois $11,637,936
- Dell, Inc. $11,295,914
- State of Wisconsin $8,368,855
- State of Connecticut $6,446,310
- State of New York $6,420,894
- Veritas Capital Fund II, L.P. $5,576,853
- Federal Management Systems, Inc. $5,558,537
EEOC Call Center Raises Controversy with Employee Union
In March 2005, the EEOC opened a national call center to report discrimination complaints, much to the dismay of Democrats in Congress and the agency’s employee union. The union had lobbied unsuccessfully to stop the call center, saying it would decrease efficiency. The EEOC argued the new center would help the commission respond to more calls.
The call center was rumored to have cost at least $18 million, considerably more than the $4.9 the agency had been paying. The union maintained that the center would be manned by underpaid workers who would perform poorly. Several Democratic senators, including Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), wrote letters opposing the call center. The EEOC is funding the call center by not filling open job slots in other areas of the agency.
EEOC Office Move Creates Conflict with Employees
In May 2007, the EEOC came into conflict with its employees when it moved its headquarters from downtown Washington, DC, to a rougher transitional neighborhood known as NoMa. The move was part of general cost-cutting measures the agency had been making in order to reduce a backlog of unresolved cases. Many employees described the situation among workers as mutinous, due to the relocation to a high crime neighborhood filled with dance clubs and warehouses.
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Founded: 1964
Annual Budget: $342 million
Employees: 2,052
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Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
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Ishimaru, Stuart
Acting Chairman
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If there is one thing Stuart J. Ishimaru, President Obama’s choice as acting chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, is familiar with, it is being in the middle of partisan battles involving federal offices that oversee civil rights and employment anti-discrimination laws.
Ishimaru’s parents, Kenzo Ishimaru and Toshiko Suzuki, who met after World War II, were both interned in the Topaz Internment Camp in Millard County, Utah, as teenagers. Born December 15, 1957, in San Jose, California, Ishimaru was student body president at Blackford High School in west San Jose. He received his AB in political science and in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1980. While attending law school at George Washington University, he served as a research assistant to the US Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians in 1981 and as assistant to the director at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law from 1982-83. Ishimaru received his JD from George Washington’s National Law Center in 1983.
From 1984-1991 Ishimaru served on the staff of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights as an assistant counsel. He then shifted to the House Armed Services Committee, serving on two subcommittees from 1991-1993.
His quiet political life ended in December 1993, when President Bill Clinton appointed Ishimaru to be the acting staff director of the US Commission on Civil Rights—a decision that set off a turf war between the White House and members of the commission. The saga began in November 1993, when commission c hairwoman Mary Frances Berry, a Clinton appointee, fired acting staff director Bobby D. Doctor, a black civil rights activist who had allied himself with the commission’s conservative members, thus giving off the perception that he had “gotten into bed with the enemy.”
After Doctor was shown the door, Clinton quickly appointed Ishimaru. But right after that, some of the commissioners voted to reinstate Doctor, against Berry’s wishes. Berry then ruled that the vote was invalid, which prompted the commission’s general counsel, Lawrence Glick, to conclude that Berry had acted improperly in nullifying the vote to bring back Doctor—so Berry fired Glick, too.
The following month, in January 1994, the conservative members of the commission rejected Ishimaru as acting staff director in a vote, but that decision was stonewalled when Berry and other commissioners abstained from the voting. While the machinations played out, Ishimaru assumed the office of staff director, one of the most powerful posts at the commission, managing it on a daily basis and implementing policies.
The political soap opera continued in April 1994, when US District Judge Royce C. Lamberth ruled that Ishimaru should step down as acting staff director, on grounds that he had no legal authority to serve after the commission voted to reject his appointment. Judge Lamberth also denied the Clinton administration’s request for a two-week stay to allow Ishimaru to finish up his work at the commission.
But rather than leave the agency, Ishimaru was given the position of executive assistant, reporting directly to chairwoman Berry. Although he moved out of his old office, Ishimaru continued to work in the staff director’s suite of offices. Despite the change in title, some staff members continued to report informally to Ishimaru, creating confusion among the staff and giving the impression that the judge’s ruling was being ignored.
Eventually, the ordeal ended later in 1994 when Clinton found a new home for Ishimaru—in the Department of Justice. He was given the post of counsel to the assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division. He provided advice on a broad range of issues, including legislative affairs, politics and strategies; maintained liaison between the office and Congress; and supervised fair housing and fair lending, equal employment opportunity, education, and Voting Rights Act litigation. Ishimaru also testified before Congressional committees on fair housing issues.
By 1999, he rose to deputy assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division, working as a principal advisor to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights and advising on management, policy, and political issues. He supervised more than 100 attorneys in high-profile litigation, including employment discrimination cases, fair housing and fair lending cases, criminal police misconduct, hate crime and slavery prosecutions, and enforcement of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
With the arrival of the Bush administration, Ishimaru left the Justice Department in 2001. Two years later, US Sen. Tom Daschle (D-ND) recommended him for a seat on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. He received a second term in December 2007, which expires on July 1, 2012. During his tenure on the EEOC, Ishimaru has primarily focused on large, systemic cases and in reinvigorating the agency’s work on race discrimination issues. He also played a role in the EEOC’s adoption of guidance on gender discrimination against workers with caregiving responsibilities.
In addition, Ishimaru opposed the EEOC’s actions to weaken age discrimination protections, as well as to suppress collection of full data on workers of two or more races. He also opposed efforts to outsource and reorganize key EEOC functions.
In the closing days of the Bush administration, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) installed a new rule that allows health care providers who receive federal grants to opt out of care based on their moral or religious beliefs. The move provoked objections from numerous political circles, including a “strenuous protest” from Ishimaru, another EEOC Democratic member, Christine Griffin, and the EEOC’s counsel, Reed Russell, who was appointed by President Bush. According to Ishimaru and Russell, neither HHS nor the White House consulted with EEOC prior to issuing the proposed regulation.
In addition to his government service, Ishimaru has taught graduate courses in equal employment opportunity at American University. He is also a long-time member of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL).
Ishimaru is married to Agnieszka Fryszman, an attorney, and they have two sons, Matthew and Benjamin.
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Earp, Naomi
Previous Chair
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A native of Newport News, Virginia, Naomi Churchill Earp has served as chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission since August 31, 2006, after serving as vice chair beginning on April 28, 2003. Her current term expires on July 1, 2010.
Earp received her bachelor’s degree from Norfolk University in Virginia, her master’s degree from Indiana University, and her Juris Doctor from Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law in Washington, DC.
She was an attorney advisor at the EEOC during the mid-1980s, and has worked as an independent consultant providing services to private employers and public agencies on a variety of employment-related issues and programs.
Her government service has included working at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, serving as director of the Office of Advocacy and Enterprise at the Department of Agriculture, and director of Equal Employment Opportunity and Diversity of the National Institute of Health.
She is a member of the Supreme Court Bar and the Pennsylvania Bar. She is also a fellow of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers and is actively involved with the Labor and Employment Section of the American Bar Association.
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