September 29, 2026
On September 28, 2026, Cohen Milstein submitted comments to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) opposing its proposed rule to eliminate administrative class complaints in the federal sector. The proposal would abolish a process that has existed for nearly five decades and has enabled federal employees to challenge systemic discrimination and obtain meaningful relief through the administrative process.
Re: Comments on Federal Sector Equal Employment Opportunity, 91 Fed. Reg. 55,690, RIN 3046-AB46
Dear Chair Lucas:
Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll LLP strongly opposes the Commission’s proposal to abolish administrative class complaints. For nearly fifty years, class complaints have enabled federal workers to challenge systemic discrimination and obtain meaningful relief through the administrative process. The Commission now proposes to dismantle that mechanism in the name of efficiency, without showing that doing so would reduce delay or improve enforcement. Our decades of experience representing workers in public- and private-sector class actions point to the opposite conclusion: eliminating class procedures would multiply proceedings, increase costs, and leave meritorious claims unheard.
Federal employees deserve timely adjudication of their claims, but abolishing class complaints would make that promise harder to fulfill. Workers challenging the same discriminatory policy would have to pursue separate administrative complaints or seek class-wide relief in federal court, imposing additional burdens on employees, agencies, and the judiciary. Others would abandon their claims because the cost, complexity, or the risk of retaliation by proceeding individually is too great. A smaller administrative docket achieved by deterring claims or shifting them to the courts would offer no measure of success in carrying out the Commission’s congressional mandate to eradicate discrimination in the federal government.
The proposal also abandons the Commission’s own longstanding findings that class complaints are essential to combating systemic discrimination and can provide a faster, less costly alternative to federal litigation. Those findings informed regulatory reforms that strengthened the class complaint process and expanded access to relief. The Commission offers no adequate explanation for entirely reversing course. Congress charged the Commission with enforcing federal employees’ rights, and persistent delays demand practical reforms, adequate staffing, and effective case management—not complete abandonment of the jurisdiction over class complaints. For the reasons herein, the Commission should withdraw this proposal and improve the process it is responsible for administering.