By Deryn Sumner, May 17, 2017
The Commission issues several thousand decisions every year. Many of these decisions are summary affirmations of agency decisions finding no discrimination without much useful analysis to those of us who practice before the EEOC. Many others still are concerning procedural dismissals, either affirming the agency’s decision to dismiss a formal complaint for reasons such as untimely filing, failure to state a claim, or mootness, or remanding the case for investigation because the dismissal was improper. So how do you as a busy practitioner stay up-to-date on the recent notable cases coming out of the Office of Federal Operations? Well of course you’re already taking a great step by reading this newsletter and attending FELTG’s courses, where we provide you with the latest and greatest decisions you need to know. And of course, if Bill will let me plug it, you can always get your agency to buy one of the fantastic publications from Dewey Publications such as the Consolidated Federal Sector EEO Update 2004-2017 (co-authored by yours truly and Gary M. Gilbert), which will be released later this summer and which summarizes all of the notable decisions every year from 2003 to 2016 (even though I’ve worked on this publication for over a decade, no, I can’t explain why the title doesn’t match up with the years) by category.
Supposing you work for one of the federal agencies with its budget on the chopping block and are looking for a free way to learn about the notable decisions issued by the Commission, the EEOC has you covered. It just recently released its Quarterly Digest which provides decisions issued in the fourth quarter of 2016 and highlights those decisions addressing attorney fees, compensatory damages, findings on the merits, remedies, summary judgment, and all those other great topics you need to know in your practice.
As a bonus, this edition also includes an overview of the law on age discrimination cases (don’t forget that administrative exhaustion requirements and the remedies available are different in these types of cases) as well as the recent decisions from the EEOC addressing claims of age discrimination.
You can locate the digest here: https://www.eeoc.gov/federal/digest/vol_2_fy17.cfm. Prior editions are available here: https://www.eeoc.gov/federal/digest/index.cfm
