Claims of employee rights and discrimination have become almost commonplace over the course of the last 30 years. Since the passage of the main civil right legislation in the 1960s—the Equal Pay Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Age Discrimination Employment Act (ADEA)—federal law has explicitly protected the rights of employees. The 1973 Rehabilitation Act and the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) added the disabled to the list of protected employees, and the 1991 Civil Rights Act expanded relief possibilities for all groups.

During the course of the last 40 years of employee rights law, the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has come to play a primary role in the enforcement of federal civil rights statutes. The EEOC was created in 1964, as part of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Virtually all discrimination complaints against employers at the federal level must go through the EEOC first before a lawsuit may be filed. Thus the agency is of paramount importance to both employers and employees.

Considering this, it is important for both employees and employers to know how the EEOC works, what kind of complaints the commission handles, and what is needed to bring a complaint before the EEOC.