Disabled veteran alleges EEOC systems and procedures quietly shut him out of justice
A disabled veteran is challenging the EEOC, saying the federal EEO system looks open on paper but shuts him out in practice.
Filed on January 16, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, the case is brought by Andrew J. Eberst, a 100% service-connected disabled veteran who lives in Wayne County, N.C. His filing describes, in detail, how he says the federal-sector EEO process failed him at nearly every step. No court has made any findings on his allegations.
According to the filing, Eberst submitted a formal EEO complaint to the Department of Veterans Affairs on October 16, 2024. On October 25, 2024, the VA acknowledged receipt and said the complaint had been referred to the Veterans Benefits Administration for investigation. Eberst alleges that the VA never actually investigated: no investigator, no Report of Investigation, and no written notice when the usual 180‑day investigation period passed.
The lawsuit also notes that, at the time, Eberst was in an agency-run employment transition phase and had applied for a GS‑13 federal position within the VA. He says a counselor denied referral to that role without documented justification and ties that to federal nondiscrimination and equal-access rules for individuals with disabilities.
When the investigation did not move, Eberst turned to the EEOC hearing process. The filing says that on April 16, 2025, the EEOC issued a Notice of Receipt of Hearing Request and assigned Hearing No. 570‑2025‑00810X. Under the rules he cites, the VA then had 15 days to send the complaint file and investigation report to the EEOC.
Instead, he alleges, the EEOC’s adjudicatory system issued a Notice of Intent to Issue Sanctions on May 2, 2025, because the VA had not uploaded the file or designated a representative. He says no sanctions followed and the file still did not appear.
The case then stayed in “Referred to ADR” status for 47 days, according to the filing, even though Eberst had declined Alternative Dispute Resolution. On June 2, 2025, Supervisory Administrative Judge Danielle Hayot was assigned. Eberst alleges there was still no scheduling order, no discovery directive and no venue transfer order, even as he raised concerns about being assigned to the Washington Field Office while living in North Carolina.
A major focus for HR readers is the description of the EEOC’s online case system. Eberst says he filed motions and exhibits through the EEOC Public Portal, saw them time‑stamped as received, then later could not open some of them. He alleges that documents with descriptive legal filenames were suppressed, while copies of the same documents with neutral alphanumeric titles remained accessible, and that he recorded the behavior on video.
The filing also details repeated requests for disability-related procedural support. Eberst claims he submitted at least fifteen reasonable accommodation requests between May and September 2025 to five EEOC components: the assigned judge, the Office of Federal Operations, the Office of Legal Counsel, the FOIA Office, the Office of Inspector General and the Office for Civil Rights. He alleges that none of them initiated an interactive process or adjusted procedures, even though his filing describes difficulty managing unstructured processes and deadlines.
On June 25, 2025, Judge Hayot issued an Order of Dismissal, according to the lawsuit. Eberst alleges that the order dismissed his hearing for failure to state a claim, treated an October 25, 2024 VA letter as his operative hearing request, referenced a “VA Form 4949” he had not seen and cited a June 6, 2025 agency filing, even though, he says, the VA did not file until June 23. He also alleges that the order quoted his May 23, 2025 accommodation request in full, including medical information, without ruling on that request.
Eberst appealed to the EEOC’s Office of Federal Operations, which docketed the appeal as No. 2025003568. He alleges that appeal processing brought more irregularities, including changing portal status messages about whether the complaint file had been received and a later revision of his official appeal date, which he links to an August 29, 2025 congressional inquiry that reused an expired privacy release.
The filing also describes a September 5, 2025 incident in which Judge Hayot allegedly emailed the dismissal order and attachments, including disability-related and medical information, to an external address at a private law firm. Eberst says an attorney from that firm emailed him about three minutes later, saying the firm had received the decision and inviting him to discuss representation.
Eberst labels the overall pattern “Adjudigate” and portrays it as a structure in which federal adjudication keeps its outward form while, in his view, denying meaningful participation through non-response, unstable records and unanswered accommodation requests.
He is seeking declaratory, injunctive, compensatory, Rule 37(e) and other relief under several federal laws. For HR professionals, the case raises pointed questions about how accessible EEO processes really are when employees depend on them, but for now it remains, firmly, at the allegation stage.
