WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) — The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) announced it secured $505 million for private sector, state, local and federal employees who filed charges through the agency in fiscal year 2018.
According to an EEOC April 10 press release, the agency's data from FY 2018 shows that retaliation remains at the top of most frequently filed charges, followed by sex, disability and race discrimination.
The agency also reported that it resolved 90,558 charges of discrimination and also reduced its charge workload to 49,607 which is down nearly 20 percent. The agency credits the reduction in charge workload to changes it made to its processing of charges including prioritizing, resolving investigations more quickly and the improvement in the EEOC's digital systems.
The EEOC also noted in its recently released statistics for FY 2018 that it handled more than a half-million calls that came in through its toll-free number along with 34,600 emails and more than 200,000 inquiries that came into EEOC field offices.
EEOC Acting Chair Victoria Lipnic said the 2018 FY statics also reflect the impact of the #MeToo movement which affected the number of sexual harassment claims for the agency.
"Our fiscal year 2018 final statistics reflect significant recoveries for individuals through our administrative enforcement and our litigation program," EEOC Acting Chair Victoria Lipnic said in the release.
"The statistics reflect the agency's successes in taking advantage of new strategies to bring about the lowest inventory of private sector charges in a dozen years. Further, we cannot look back on last year without noting the significant impact of the #MeToo movement in the number of sexual harassment and retaliation charges filed with the agency."
The EEOC filed 199 merits lawsuits alleging discrimination and received a "successful outcome" in more than 95 precent of its district court resolutions, the agency said.