President Trump’s Nomination of Brittany Bull Panuccio Restores EEOC Quorum

What the Commission’s New Majority Means for Workplace Enforcement and Employer Compliance

On October 7, 2025, the U.S. Senate confirmed President Trump’s nomination of Brittany Bull Panuccio to a vacant seat on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC or the Commission). Commissioner Panuccio’s confirmation grants EEOC a quorum for the first time since President Trump’s termination of Commissioners Jocelyn Samuels and Charlotte Burrows in January 2025.

Commissioner Panuccio previously served as Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida. Prior to her service as Assistant U.S. Attorney, Commissioner Panuccio served the U.S. Department of Education as Attorney Advisor to the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights and as a litigator in Jones Day’s Labor and Employment Group. Following law school, she clerked for Judge Neomi Rao of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and Judge Don Willett of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

Role of the EEOC

First created by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the EEOC’s primary responsibility is to receive and investigate charges of unlawful discrimination, determine if reasonable cause exists to believe the charge is true, and, if the agency determines there has been a violation of law, to attempt to reach a voluntary settlement through conciliation. Under the original mandate of Title VII, EEOC had no authority to bring lawsuits on its own. The EEOC had only the power to recommend that the Department of Justice prosecute “pattern and practice” lawsuits, challenging systemic, widespread discrimination rather than isolated incidents.

However, with the passage of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 (EEOA), Congress amended Title VII to grant EEOC the authority back up administrative findings of discrimination with full subpoena and litigation authority, including the right to file suit in federal court. The EEOA also expanded Title VII’s jurisdiction to include employers with 15 or more employees, state and local governments, labor unions, and educational institutions, and provided for a General Counsel to be appointed by the President.

The EEOC is comprised of five Commissioners, each serving staggered five-year terms, with no more than three Commissioners from the same political party. The Commission votes on whether the EEOC will permit amicus briefs to be filed on behalf of the agency in the federal Circuit courts of appeal, and all regulatory and enforcement guidance issued by the Commission. Pursuant to a January 13, 2021, Resolution, the EEOC also votes on whether to sponsor certain categories of cases.¹

EEOC Moving Forward

The EEOC now consists of three members: two Republicans, Andrea Lucas and Brittany Panuccio, and one Democrat, Kalpana Kotagal. Commissioner Lucas serves as Chair. With a quorum and a Republican majority, major changes to civil rights policy and litigation enforcement are on the horizon for 2026.

EEOC’s Scrapping of Internal Voting Procedures

On January 14, 2026, the first public meeting of the EEOC with a full quorum was held, and, by a vote of 2 to 1, the Commission voted to rescind voting procedures giving the Commissioners the right to call for public discussion on proposed policy changes and a timeline for Commissioners to review documents before a vote. The recission grants Chair Lucas untrammeled authority to set the Commission’s agenda and determine the issues to be voted upon without a public meeting.

The now rescinded voting procedures were enacted only in the last weeks of the Biden Administration. As such, their repeal can hardly be termed surprising, and indeed, the EEOC has operated without such procedures under both Democratic and Republican Chairs. Nevertheless, rescission of the voting procedures will give EEOC’s Republican majority a quicker means of enacting its policy agenda.

Revision of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act Final Rule

With a GOP majority, major revisions are coming to EEOC’s past promulgation of its Final Rule enacting the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA). As senior labor counsel to Ranking Member Richard Burr (R-NC) on the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, this author shepherded the PWFA’s final passage in a supplemental appropriations bill in the last hours of the 117th Congress in 2022.

The PWFA, as originally envisioned by Congress and negotiated by this author, was enacted to remedy a loophole in the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA). Though the PDA prohibited employers from engaging in adverse personnel actions, such as firing, refusing to hire, or refusing to promote, an employee because of pregnancy, it did not allow for pregnant women to be granted reasonable accommodations.  This is integral to equal opportunity in the workplace, as pregnant women deserve the same flexibility as men to remain in their positions, especially if their household relies on two incomes.

To ensure final passage, the PWFA differed from the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in one key element. To be considered a qualified individual under the ADA, an employee seeking reasonable accommodation must demonstrate they can perform the essential functions of the job, with or without the accommodation.  In contrast, an employee can still be a qualified individual for a reasonable accommodation under the PWFA even if they cannot perform essential job functions. However, the employee must be able to resume essential job functions in the near future.²

In its Final Rule, EEOC defined “in the near future” to encompass all 40 weeks of the pregnancy. Many business and human resource groups that previously supported PWFA’s passage opposed EEOC’s definition of “in the near future”, believing it expanded the concept to an unreasonably long duration and was contrary to legislative intent. With a GOP majority, the EEOC will likely engage in notice and comment rulemaking proposing a more limited definition of “in the near future” that balances the needs of employers.

The PWFA also requires an employer to make a reasonable accommodation “to the known limitations of a qualified employee related to pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions” absent a showing of undue hardship.³ This language is directly imported from the PDA. Circuit court precedent has long held that “related medical conditions” include abortion, fertility, and infertility treatments.⁴ EEOC accorded the same treatment to the Final Rule, defining “pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions” to include abortion and fertility treatment. Chair Lucas opposed the PWFA Final Rule as a minority Commissioner for this reason, and issued a lengthy public statement excoriating EEOC for including abortion as a known limitation of pregnancy.

With a GOP majority, Chair Lucas may attempt to promulgate a revised PWFA Final Rule that significantly limits the known limitations related to pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions.  However, a narrower definition that blatantly excludes abortion and fertility treatment from PWFA’s coverage, even if enacted, will garner the opposition of civil rights groups and almost certainly be the subject of a preliminary injunction.

Recission of 2024 Enforcement Guidance on Harassment in the Workplace

On January 22, 2026, the EEOC, also by a 2-1 vote, with Chair Lucas and Commissioner Panuccio in the majority, voted to rescind Enforcement Guidance on Harassment in the Workplace (Enforcement Guidance).

The Enforcement Guidance was met with controversy at the proposed and final rulemaking stage by the then-GOP minority. At the time of its promulgation, the GOP minority lodged concerns that the Enforcement Guidance contorted precedent and statute by blending standards for retaliation and harassment, relying too heavily on employees’ subjective state of mind, and creating new protected categories, such as intersectional harassment, that were not mandated under Title VII.

Employers were also required to implement pronoun usage and permit bathroom access consistent with an employee’s gender identity. The GOP minority contended this was a misapplication of the Supreme Court’s holding in Bostock v. Clayton County.⁵ The Court’s decision in Bostock expressly did not “purport to address bathrooms, locker rooms, or anything else of the kind.”⁶

Stakeholders subject to EEOC’s remit can expect the Commission to take a more constrained, limited approach to Title VII when issuing any future Guidance in the wake of the Enforcement Guidance’s repeal.

EEO-1 Component 2 Data Collection

With a GOP majority, EEOC is also unlikely to revive the collection of EEO-1 Component 2 data. Private employers with 100 or more employees and federal contractors with 50 or more employees are required to submit an EEO-1 report, including workforce demographic data (now known as Component 1 data). The demographic data was broken down by race/ethnicity, sex, and 10 job categories based on a quarterly “snapshot” period.

Under the Obama Administration, the EEOC added a pay and hours requirement (“Component 2”) to the EEO-1 report, which was finalized in September 2016. The Component 2 data collection imposed on employers was voluminous, requiring covered employers and contractors to submit confidential W-2 payroll data, grouped into 12 random pay bands. The Trump Administration’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) suspended collection of the Component 2 data, only for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to vacate  OMB’s suspension as arbitrary and capricious. In 2020, the EEOC, under then-Chair Janet Dhillon, voted unanimously to fund a study by the National Academy of Sciences/Committee on National Statistics (NAS/CNSTAT) to assess the quality and utility of Component 2 data.

Employers, Human Resources (HR), business trade groups including the Chamber of Commerce, and a wide array of economists opposed the collection of the Component 2 data. Many economists noted that W-2 data reflects a mix of employee and employer decisions, such as voluntary overtime and benefits, and as such, are least likely to reflect discriminatory practices. W-2 payroll data is also far more burdensome for employers to collect than annualized compensation or base rates of pay. Moreover, because the Component 2 data does not include job experience, education, or skill level across the 12 random pay bands, employers and trade groups contend that the W-2 data’s utility for establishing pay discrimination is nonexistent. The NAS/CNSTAT report later confirmed the 12 pay bands “did not include measures of legitimate causes of pay differences such as educational attainment and tenure.” There were further concerns relating to the confidential and proprietary nature of W-2 data.

Nevertheless, the Biden Administration’s EEOC announced in its Spring 2024 Regulatory Agenda that it was proposing a rulemaking to authorize the collection of Component 2 data as necessary for the enforcement of Title VII and the Equal Pay Act of 1963. With a GOP majority on the Commission, that proposal will likely be rescinded or altered drastically.

Implications for Employers

Now empowered with a quorum for the first time in nearly a year, Chair Lucas is prioritizing major changes to EEOC’s policy and regulatory priorities. In the wake of the rescission of the Enforcement Guidance, employers should refrain from any official policy regarding pronoun or bathroom use.  Employers should also be on the lookout for further changes to the PWFA and Component 2 data collection.

For businesses needing assistance with their regulatory and legal obligations, or to discuss how these potential changes might affect your business operations, call Scarinci Hollenbeck LLC today.

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1. Cases the Commission votes on are those (i) involving allegations of systemic or pattern and practice discrimination; (ii) expected to involve a major expenditure of agency resources; (iii) presenting issues on which the Commission has taken a position contrary to precedent in the Circuit in which the case will be filed; and (iv) presenting issues on which the General Counsel proposes to take a position contrary to precedent in the Circuit in which the case will be filed. In addition, the EEOC also votes on a minimum of one litigation recommendation from each District Office each fiscal year. ↩︎
2. 42 U.S.C. § 2000gg(6) ↩︎
3. Id. § 2000gg-1(1)-(5) ↩︎
4. See Doe v. C.A.R. S. Protection Plus Inc., 527 F.3d 358, 363-64 (3d Cir. 2008)(holding plain language and legislative history of PDA, together with EEOC guidelines, prohibit an employer from discriminating against a woman simply because she exercised her right to an abortion); Turic v. Holland Hospitality, Inc., 85 F.3d 1211, 1214 (6th Cir.1996)(same) ↩︎
5. 590 U.S. 644,681 (2020) ↩︎
6. Ibid ↩︎