{"id":11088,"date":"2026-07-03T01:42:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T01:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/eeoc-rescinds-long-standing-affirmative-action-guidance\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T01:42:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T01:42:09","slug":"eeoc-rescinds-long-standing-affirmative-action-guidance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/eeoc-rescinds-long-standing-affirmative-action-guidance\/","title":{"rendered":"EEOC Rescinds Long-standing Affirmative Action Guidance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n
\n

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (\u201cEEOC\u201d) has voted to rescind two decades-old documents addressing permissible affirmative action under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964: (i)\u00a0its 1979 Interpretive Rule, \u201cAffirmative Action Appropriate Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,\u201d and (ii)\u00a0Section\u00a0607 of the EEOC\u2019s Compliance Manual, which outlined the agency\u2019s enforcement positions with respect to permissible affirmative action and affirmative action plans.[1]<\/a> According to the EEOC, the rescission \u201cis consistent with the text of Title VII and Supreme Court precedent.\u201d[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

The first rescinded document, the 1979 Interpretive Rule, has served as the EEOC\u2019s roadmap for when private employers may voluntarily adopt affirmative action plans consistent with Title VII. It encouraged employers to conduct a \u201creasonable self-analysis\u201d of their workforce and permitted reasonable voluntary action where that analysis identified adverse impact, the lingering effects of prior discrimination, or artificially limited applicant or promotion pools.[3]<\/a><\/p>\n

The second rescinded document, Section\u00a0607 of the EEOC\u2019s Compliance Manual, elaborated on the 1979 guidelines and set out the agency\u2019s enforcement approach to permissible affirmative action plans. The EEOC stated that Section\u00a0607 was \u201cmade obsolete\u201d in light of the rescission of the 1979 Interpretive Rule.[4]<\/a><\/p>\n

The EEOC stated that the documents ran afoul of Title VII and the U.S. Supreme Court\u2019s 2025 decision in Ames<\/em> v. Ohio Department of Youth Services<\/em>, in which a unanimous Court held that Title VII requires the same evidentiary standard for all disparate-treatment plaintiffs\u2014regardless of whether they belong to a majority or minority group.[5]<\/a><\/p>\n

In light of the rescission, employers should review any voluntary affirmative action plans, DEI-related programs, and other initiatives that consider protected characteristics in employment decisions, and should document the legitimate, non-discriminatory basis for any measures they retain.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

[4]<\/a> EEOC Press Release, supra note 1.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (\u201cEEOC\u201d) has voted to rescind two decades-old documents addressing permissible affirmative action under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964: (i)\u00a0its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11089,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[715,8204,1118,3798,8203,5548],"class_list":["post-11088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-action","tag-affirmative","tag-eeoc","tag-guidance","tag-longstanding","tag-rescinds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11088\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}