KCNF has received reports that the EEOC, apparently in a joint push with OMB, is preparing sweeping changes to the federal sector EEO complaint process — and the process behind these changes has been unusually closed. The EEOC met with agency counsel on Monday, July 27, 2026, to walk through the proposed changes: no recording devices were permitted, no copies of the proposed regulatory language were allowed to leave the room, and no attorneys representing federal employees were invited to participate. Thus, the information below is based on reports relayed to KCNF.
Federal employees who believe they’ve been discriminated against are about to lose one of their most important procedural protections: the current right to request a hearing before an EEOC Administrative Judge.
A Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR) is expected in September, presumably followed by the standard 30-day comment period.
Here is what’s reportedly on the table:
The informal counseling process would be eliminated. The initial EEO counseling stage — long the first step for any federal employee raising a discrimination claim — would go away entirely.
The 180-day investigation deadline would now end in a mandatory Final Agency Decision (FAD), not a choice. Today, following the filing of a formal complaint of discrimination, a federal agency has 180 days to complete an investigation and issue a Report of Investigation (ROI). At that point, the employee has the option to: request a FAD, request a hearing before an EEOC Administrative Judge, or file suit in federal court. Under the proposed rule, after a formal complaint is filed, the agency would have 180 days to investigate, prepare the ROI, and issue a mandatory FAD.
The right to request an EEOC hearing would disappear entirely. That three-way choice — FAD, hearing, or federal court — goes away. Instead, the employee’s only administrative option after the FAD would reportedly be to appeal it to the newly designated “Office of Federal Sector” (OFS), previously known as the Office of Federal Operations, which is the EEOC’s appellate division.
A hearing would become discretionary, not a right. OFS would review the appeal and decide whether a hearing is warranted. Only if OFS says yes would the matter be referred to the EEOC’s hearing unit for a hearing.
Class complaints would be eliminated. The class complaint mechanism, one of the few tools available to address systemic discrimination affecting groups of federal employees, would no longer exist.
Why this matters: Right now, a federal employee alleging discrimination has a right to request an independent hearing from an EEOC Administrative Judge, which involves discovery and a decision-maker who isn’t the agency accused of wrongdoing. Under this proposal, that guarantee disappears. The agency investigates the complaint and issues the initial merits decision, while a hearing would occur only if OFS determines that one is warranted. Alternatively, employees will be pushed into the already overburdened and expensive federal court process. Add the elimination of class complaints, and the tools available to federal employees facing discrimination shrink considerably.
We’ll be watching closely for the NOPR in September to learn the precise contours of the changes and will have more to say after the proposed text is public. In the meantime, federal employees and agencies alike should understand that the rules of the road for these claims may be about to change substantially.