April 8, 2026
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s latest performance report underscored its dramatically realigned priorities, signaled an enhanced focus on securing settlements before filing suit, and promised a wider embrace of artificial intelligence and other new technologies in its work, experts said.
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The focus on curtailing anti-American bias represents another significant departure from agency past practices, said Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC partner Joseph M. Sellers, founder and co-chair of the worker-side firm’s civil rights and employment practice.
“Historically, national origin discrimination was viewed as treating people adversely because they have a different national origin than those from the country, meaning immigrants, people who have a different surname, accents, or cultural customs that would distinguish them,” Sellers said. “That’s how courts have very consistently focused those protections under Title VII.”
Sellers said the agency’s focus has now shifted to practices it contends “show a receptivity to immigrants as employees.”
The EEOC highlighted in the report a $1.4 million consent decree it struck last year in what it called a “foreign-preference” national origin discrimination lawsuit against LeoPalace, a major hotel and resort in Guam.
“It’s a profoundly different way to look at national origin discrimination, compared to the way courts have looked at this for 50 years,” Sellers said.
Read EEOC Report Reflects New Priorities, QuickerDeals, AI Push.