By: Emily Kimble
On Thursday, July 13 th , 2023, the Senate confirmed Kalpana Kotagal as a commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), with a 49-47 vote. Kotagal is an accredited employment and civil rights plaintiff’s litigator, serving as partner in Cohen Milstein's Civil Rights & Employment practice. She has represented women and other marginalized groups in civil rights class action suits, including pregnancy discrimination class action, nationwide Title VII sex discrimination, and Equal Pay Act cases. Kotagal was first nominated to be part of the Commission in April of 2022. The EEOC now has a Democrat majority for the first time in the Biden Administration.
With the Commission’s shift to a Democrat majority, employers can expect to see a focus from the agency on sexual harassment, LGBTQIA+ discrimination, pregnancy accommodations and discrimination, and artificial intelligence bias. In addition, EEOC is expected to focus further on pay equity – possibly leading to the reinstation of some variation of EEO-1 Component 2 compensation reporting. As a reminder, Component 2 was halted in 2020 after the EEOC acknowledged the burden imposed on employers outweighed the utility of the pay data.
