President Donald Trump appointed Victoria Lipnic (“Ms. Lipnic”) as the new Chairwoman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”).   Ms. Lipnic is not new to the EEOC.  She has been an EEOC Commissioner since 2010 and was a President Obama appointee.  She has assured the employment community that she will not undo the EEOC’s “pro-employee” policies of the last eight (8) years; however, Ms. Lipnic has also confirmed that she will focus on policies that will create economic growth and employment opportunities. 

Despite Ms. Lipnic’s assurance of no drastic changes, the employment community expects regulatory rollbacks and changes in the EEOC’s resources.  Ms. Lipnic has expressed interest in rolling back the EEOC’s recently approved regulation modifying employer’s annual EEO-1 submissions, set to go into effect in March 2018, which requires employers to report pay data by gender, race and ethnicity.  Moreover, it is expected President Trump will tighten the EEOC’s budget, which will likely result in fewer investigators, longer investigations, more conciliation and a concentrated focus on high-profile, broad impact cases instead of low-value, low-deterrent cases.  While any changes to the EEOC will take some time to go into effect, it is important for employers to pay attention to trends occurring in their local EEOC offices to get a better sense of how they will be directly impacted.