Something is shifting in the employment law landscape and it’s happening faster than many HR teams realize. Over the past year and into 2025, there’s clear evidence that discrimination charge activity at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) remains elevated and evolving.

In fiscal year 2024, the EEOC reported 88,531 new discrimination charges, a more than 9% increase over the prior year, with retaliation once again the most common allegation.

Even though the EEOC has not yet published final nationwide FY 2025 charge totals, the agency’s 2025 performance report indicates that its modernized intake system and ongoing outreach efforts are handling roughly 90,000 charges of discrimination annually, based on the volume of inquiries and filings it processes. This suggests sustained high levels of charge filings in 2025, rather than a decline.

What’s especially notable is how many of these charges are being filed.

Across HR professionals, employment lawyers, and even public worker forums like Reddit, there is growing anecdotal evidence that more employees are filing EEOC charges without legal representation, proceeding pro se in significant numbers. While the EEOC does not currently publish formal statistics separating represented from unrepresented filers, ground-level signals are unmistakable employees describe filing and progressing through the EEOC process independently, often uploading detailed evidence and engaging with investigators directly.

And here’s the mistake many employers make: a charge without an attorney is still a charge.

As the EEOC itself makes clear, every charge triggers the same investigative machinery from position statements to deadlines and employer outreach regardless of legal counsel. Only a fraction of charges ever becomes formal lawsuits, and in fact the EEOC reportedly filed fewer merits suits in FY 2025 than in many prior years, reflecting a trend toward administrative resolution rather than litigation.

Now layer in today’s HR reality. Many organizations run lean, AI-optimized HR teams, designed for efficiency, not surge capacity. At the same time, employees now use AI tools to draft lengthy, highly detailed narratives that sound legal even when they’re messy or emotionally charged. The result is more filings, more noise, and more investigative burden, all hitting smaller teams with less margin for error.

Meanwhile, the evidence pool has exploded. Text messages, Slack threads, screenshots, DMs, and recordings now shape the narrative before HR even knows there’s a problem.

In this environment, unforced errors missed follow-ups, inconsistent documentation, managers going “off script” are what often turn weak claims into expensive ones.

This is the moment for organizations to tighten processes, train managers, and get serious about documentation before a pro se charge takes on a life of its own.

Source: cwc.org; EEOC; Reddit; Mondaq