The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC or Commission) has broad authority under the statutes it enforces to investigate alleged violations, including the right to demand relevant information. While the federal courts are inclined to defer to the EEOC’s often broad information requests, this does not always happen, as EEOC v. Eberspaecher North America illustrates. In Eberspaecher, a split three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirmed a federal district court ruling that limited enforcement of an EEOC subpoena to a single facility, even though the Commission was demanding information from six other company locations. The panel majority concluded that because the underlying charge involved a single facility, based on the complaint of a single employee, about a specific kind of alleged discriminatory practice, the EEOC’s demand for information from the other six facilities was irrelevant.
Members of the Center for Workplace Compliance (CWC) can read more here.