Last week the EEOC announced that it had issued new practices for transmitting employer position statements to charging parties and their attorneys.  Historically, most Commission field offices did not provide copies of the actual position statements to the charging parties during the course of the investigation.  Rather, investigators typically retyped or summarized relevant positions of the position statement in a letter to the charging party or read them to charging party or attorney to obtain a response.

With the newly announced procedures, position statement requested after January 1, 2016, and all nonconfidential attachments to those statements will be forwarded, upon request, to the charging party or her representative.  To designate information as confidential, the employer/respondent must take specific steps to label and designate the confidential information.  Lacking from the new procedures is a reciprocal provision that the Commission will provide a copy of the charging party’s intake questionnaire or other information the charging party provides to the Commission to the employer.  The Commission further clarifies that any information received from the Charging Party in response to the position statement will also not be shared with the respondent employer (so much for an impartial, independent investigation).

For more information on the Commission’s new practices, you can read its press release on the new procedure here.

EEOC Questions and Answers for Employers here.

EEOC Questions and Answers for Charging Parties here.