On Wednesday, August 26, 2026, at 10:00 a.m. Eastern, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission will hold an open meeting to vote on whether to publish a proposed rule titled “Revision and Update to 29 CFR Part 1614” (RIN 3046-AB46). Part 1614 is the regulation that governs how federal employees challenge discrimination, harassment, and retaliation inside their own agencies — the counseling stage, the investigation, the hearing before an EEOC Administrative Judge, the appeal.
Reports say the proposal would end a federal employee’s present right to choose a hearing before an independent EEOC Administrative Judge, eliminate the pre-complaint counseling and mediation stage, and abolish the administrative process for group (class) discrimination complaints.
As of the morning of August 25, the public cannot read the proposal.
On August 25, our firm sent the Commission a letter opposing any proposal that would do those things — and asking the Commission, before it acts, to release the actual text, take public comment seriously, and protect every pending case. You can read the full letter here:
Read Our Letter to the EEOC (PDF)
This post explains what is happening, how we pieced it together from the public record, and what you can do about it — in plain English.
First, take a breath
If you have a pending EEO case, nothing about your case changed this week. The current Part 1614 rules — and every deadline under them — remain fully in force. The August 26 vote is about whether to publish a proposal for public comment. Publishing a proposal changes no one’s rights. Nothing changes unless and until a final rule takes effect, and one of our letter’s central demands is an express savings clause protecting cases already in the system.
So this is not a moment for panic. It is a moment to pay attention.
How we know what we know — and what nobody knows
Because EEOC has not released the proposal, everything the public knows comes from tracing the regulatory paper trail. Here is that trail, with sources:
- July 22, 2026 — EEOC submitted the draft rule, RIN 3046-AB46, to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), the White House office that reviews significant regulations before they are published. That submission is publicly logged on reginfo.gov.
- July 27, 2026 — According to public reporting, agency EEO officials received a closed briefing on the plan. The first substantive public descriptions came from the law firm Kalijarvi, Chuzi, Newman & Fitch on July 29 and from Bloomberg Law on July 31.
- August 19, 2026 — OIRA concluded its review “Consistent with Change,” and EEOC dated its notice of the August 26 open meeting.
- August 26, 2026 — The Commission is scheduled to deliberate and vote on the draft proposal.
What is not in the public record, as of August 25: the regulatory text, the preamble, a redline against current Part 1614, any workload or cost analysis, any transition plan, any Federal Register filing, and any Regulations.gov docket.
That gap matters, and it frames everything below. Descriptions of what the proposal contains are reported, not confirmed. Our letter says this plainly: our objections address the architecture credibly reported from that closed July briefing, not language EEOC has disclosed. If the reports are incomplete or wrong, there is an easy fix — release the text.
The system today, in plain English
Under current Part 1614, a federal employee who believes they faced discrimination starts by contacting an EEO counselor — generally within 45 days. Counseling and optional mediation resolve or narrow many matters early. If the matter isn’t resolved, the employee files a formal complaint and the employing agency investigates itself.
Then comes the step that matters most: after the investigation, the choice of what happens next generally belongs to the employee. You can request a hearing before an EEOC Administrative Judge — a decision-maker independent of the agency you accused — or ask the agency for a final decision and appeal from there. An Administrative Judge can order discovery, take sworn testimony, make credibility findings, and sanction an agency that withholds evidence. 29 C.F.R. § 1614.109. Those hearings are closed to the public, which matters when a case involves harassment, medical conditions, or disability.
You may not win. Some cases end without a live hearing. But the agency’s version of events is not the last word, and the employee — not the agency — chooses the neutral forum.
What reports say would change
Under the reported architecture, the employing agency would investigate itself, build the record, and issue the first merits decision in every complaint — a final agency decision, reportedly within a 180-day model. An employee could appeal, but a hearing before a judge would happen only if a newly designated EEOC office (a reported “Office of Federal Sector”) granted one. Permission-only.
No public source identifies the standard that office would apply, whether it must give written reasons, any deadline for deciding, or any way to challenge a denial. Nothing public explains what happens when an agency’s investigation is incomplete or late. Reports also say the counseling and mediation stage would be eliminated, and the administrative class-complaint process — the mechanism for group discrimination cases, with its certification, notice, and tolling protections — would be abolished, with no public answer for what happens to certified classes and people relying on them.
Every sentence in the two paragraphs above carries the same caveat: reported, not confirmed, because the text is not public.
Why this matters — in EEOC’s own numbers
None of the following figures are ours. They come from EEOC’s published data, cited in our letter.
Federal employees requested 7,175 EEOC hearings in fiscal year 2025. The hearings program resolved 6,178 matters that year and obtained almost $78.1 million in benefits for employees. EEOC’s appellate program reversed nearly 35 percent of the procedural dismissals it reviewed — independent review catches real errors at scale.
Meanwhile, the agencies that would decide every case first already struggle with the deadlines they have. EEOC’s own study found that only 47 percent of merit final agency decisions were issued on time in FY 2021 — and the late ones averaged 178 days past due. In that same year, agencies completed 33,506 counselings, and only 36.5 percent became formal complaints — evidence that the early-resolution stage reports say would be eliminated does substantial screening and settling work.
There is also a privacy problem few people are talking about. Administrative hearings are closed. Federal court dockets are public. If neutral administrative adjudication becomes permission-only, more employees face a hard choice: accept the accused agency’s decision, or put a harassment, medical, or disability dispute on a public docket.
And one more receipt: in March 2026, EEOC’s own budget justification to Congress described its hearings program as providing “full, fair, and impartial adjudication” and requested $35.377 million to run it. The draft rule went to OIRA four months later. Our letter asks the obvious question — what evidence changed in between?
What we sent the EEOC, and why a letter matters
Rulemaking runs on records. If a final rule is ever challenged, what matters is what the agency knew, what it was asked, and what it ignored before it acted. A pre-vote letter puts the objections and the unanswered questions in front of the Commission — in writing, with a date on it — so no one can later say the problems were invisible.
Our August 25 letter asks the Commission to defer action until the proposal can be examined publicly. If it votes to proceed anyway, the letter demands that it do so in the open: release the approved text with a redline against current Part 1614, the preamble, the cost and workload analyses, and the consultation chronology; provide at least 90 days for public comment (EEOC’s own coordination regulation contemplates no less than 60); hold a dedicated public hearing where federal employees, unions, practitioners, agency EEO professionals, and Administrative Judges can be heard; genuinely consider narrower alternatives — including the pilot authority EEOC already gave itself in 29 C.F.R. § 1614.102(f); and adopt an express savings clause protecting pending complaints, requested hearings, appeals, certified classes, settlements, and accrued deadlines.
The letter also asks EEOC to circulate it to every Commissioner before the meeting, preserve it in the meeting record, and place it in the rulemaking docket if one opens. It is advocacy before a vote, not a substitute for a docketed comment — when EEOC opens a formal docket, we will file text-specific comments and publish a plain-English breakdown of the actual proposal.
Read Our Letter to the EEOC (PDF)If you have a pending case right now
Keep working your case. Every current deadline still applies — the 45-day window to contact an EEO counselor, the deadlines to file a formal complaint, to request a hearing, to appeal. Do not abandon a pending case because of a headline about a proposal no one has read. If you are unsure how any of this could eventually touch your situation, talk with a federal-sector employment attorney promptly — that is true this week, and it will be true whatever the Commission does.
What you can do today
Watch the meeting — it is a public, open Commission meeting on August 26; details are in EEOC’s meeting notice. Share this post with federal employees, union stewards, EEO professionals, and civil-rights organizations — the people this system exists for should not learn about its redesign after the fact. And when a docket opens, comment. We will publish exactly how, and what the proposal actually says, at that point.
Until then, the asks are simple, and they are the same four we put in writing to the Commission: release the text, hold a real public hearing, give the public at least 90 days, and protect every pending case.
This post is general information, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Descriptions of the unreleased proposal are based on public reporting, as explained above.
FAQs
Does the August 26 vote change my rights or deadlines? No. A vote to publish a proposed rule starts a public-comment process; it changes nothing by itself. Current Part 1614 rules and every deadline under them remain fully in force unless and until a final rule takes effect.
What is an EEOC Administrative Judge? An adjudicator at the EEOC — independent of the agency you filed against — who can order discovery, take sworn testimony under oath, decide credibility, sanction an agency that withholds evidence, and issue a decision on your case. Under today’s rules, after the agency’s investigation, the employee generally has the right to elect that hearing. 29 C.F.R. § 1614.109.
What exactly is being voted on? Whether to publish a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) — a draft regulation — revising 29 C.F.R. Part 1614 (RIN 3046-AB46). If published, the public gets a comment period, EEOC must consider the comments, and only afterward can it issue a final rule.
Where can I read the proposal? You can’t yet — that is the central problem. As of August 25, no text, redline, or analysis has been released and no public docket exists. When it is published, it will appear in the Federal Register and on Regulations.gov, and we will link both here and publish a plain-English breakdown.
Could a rule take away my right to sue in federal court? The right to file a civil action is in the statute itself, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-16(c), and the Supreme Court held in Chandler v. Roudebush, 425 U.S. 840 (1976), that the case proceeds fresh — de novo. A regulation cannot repeal a statute. The concern is the administrative path: court litigation is public, slower, and more expensive, which is exactly why accessible neutral administrative adjudication matters.
SOURCES
- EEOC, Notice of Open Commission Meeting (Aug. 19, 2026) — https://www.eeoc.gov/meetings/notice-open-commission-meeting-August-26
- OIRA, RIN 3046-AB46, Revision and Update to 29 CFR Part 1614 — https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/eoDetails?rrid=1477811
- KCNF, Major Changes Coming to the Federal Sector EEO Process (July 29, 2026) — https://kcnfdc.com/blog/major-changes-coming-to-the-federal-sector-eeo-process/
- Bloomberg Law, Federal Worker EEO Process Eyed for Major Overhaul in Trump Plan (July 31, 2026) — https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/federal-worker-eeo-process-eyed-for-major-overhaul…
- 29 C.F.R. Part 1614 (current) — https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-29/subtitle-B/chapter-XIV/part-1614
- EEOC, FY 2021 Annual Report on the Federal Workforce, Part I — https://www.eeoc.gov/fy-2021-annual-report-federal-workforce-part-1-eeo-complaint-processing-activi…
- EEOC, Timeliness of Merit Final Agency Decisions in the Federal Sector — https://www.eeoc.gov/federal-sector/reports/timeliness-merit-final-agency-decisions-federal-sector
- EEOC, Fiscal Year 2027 Congressional Budget Justification — https://www.eeoc.gov/fiscal-year-2027-congressional-budget-justification
- EEOC, FY 2027 Agency Performance Plan and FY 2025 Agency Performance Report — https://www.eeoc.gov/fy-2027-agency-performance-plan-app-and-fy-2025-agency-performance-report-apr
- Southworth PC, Letter to the Commission re RIN 3046-AB46 (Aug. 25, 2026) — https://www.attorneysforfederalemployees.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/1204812/2026/08/Southworth-PC-EEOC-Part-1614-Pre-Vote-Letter_2026-08-25.pdf