What did top law firms agree to behind closed doors? The EEOC won't say
Two law professors are suing the EEOC, demanding it release the secret settlement agreements behind its sweeping crackdown on BigLaw DEI programs.
The lawsuit, filed on February 16, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, asks the court to force the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to hand over records it has refused to produce for months. At stake are the undisclosed terms of deals the agency struck with some of the world's largest law firms over their diversity, equity, and inclusion practices — terms that could reshape how every employer in the country thinks about DEI.
The dispute goes back to March 2025, when President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the EEOC to scrutinize major law firms for consistency with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Within days, EEOC Acting Chair Andrea Lucas fired off letters to twenty law firms questioning their DEI programs. The letters, according to the filing, were based entirely on publicly available information. None indicated the firms had been investigated or charged with anything.
By April 2025, four firms — Kirkland & Ellis LLP, Latham & Watkins LLP, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP, and A&O Shearman Sterling, LLC — had signed settlement agreements with the agency. The lawsuit also alleges that Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP; Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom LLP; and Milbank LLP reached similar deals. What those agreements actually require remains a mystery.
That is precisely what the plaintiffs — Elise Bernlohr Maizel of Michigan State University College of Law and Christopher D. Hampson of the University of Florida Levin College of Law — set out to uncover. In May 2025, they filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking all correspondence between the EEOC and the firms, all agreements that came out of the letters, and any records describing those agreements.
The EEOC shut them down. Over two responses in June and July 2025, the agency denied the request entirely, arguing that federal law bars it from releasing information tied to investigations and that the records contained sensitive personal details. The professors appealed in August 2025. The EEOC extended its own deadline to respond, then went silent. A government shutdown from October 1 to November 12, 2025, added further delay. When the professors followed up in late November, the agency said a decision was being drafted. None ever came.
As of the filing, the appeal had been sitting unanswered for 102 business days — more than five times the 20-day window the law allows. No records have been produced. No determination has been issued.
For HR leaders, this case matters far beyond BigLaw. If those settlement terms ever see daylight, they would offer the clearest picture yet of what the EEOC now views as a DEI red flag under federal employment law — and what it expects employers to do about it. In an environment where organizations are already second-guessing their diversity programs, that kind of clarity could be the difference between confidently standing behind a program and quietly dismantling one.
The case remains in its early stages, with no decision on the merits.
