Within the next six months, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) expects to develop and/or issue six regulations affecting workplace laws and practices. According to the agency’s spring regulatory agenda released on Monday, regulations implementing the employment provisions of the Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act (GINA) are expected to be issued by the end of this month. The EEOC’s proposed GINA regulations were published earlier this year.

The EEOC will also move forward with regulations regarding the equal employment provisions of the Americans With Disabilities Act Amendments Act (ADAAA).  The ADAAA, enacted in 2008, expanded the definition of “disability” under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in light of a number of Supreme Court decisions. In December 2008, the EEOC commissioners deadlocked along party lines on whether to approve former Chair Naomi Earp’s proposed regulations.  According to the EEOC’s agenda, a notice of proposed rulemaking will be issued by August of this year.

The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) will be subject to two rules as a result of the Supreme Court’s decisions in Smith v. City of Jackson and Meacham v. Atomic Knolls Laboratory. In Smith, the Court held that an employer could defend against a disparate impact claim under the ADEA by showing that its alleged adverse employment decision was due to reasonable factors other than age. In Meacham, the Court ruled that employers bear the burden of providing this defense. The proposed regulations, therefore, address this disparate impact burden of proof under the ADEA.  Final regulations on this issue are expected by March of 2010.  In addition, the EEOC intends to publish a notice of proposed rulemaking to amend its current regulations on what constitutes “reasonable factors other than age” by August of this year.

In a more procedural vein, the EEOC intends to issue a notice of proposed rulemaking by the end of next month to make changes and corrections to the federal sector equal employment opportunity complaint process. The agency also plans to revise its race and ethnicity data collection method to make employee self-identification the preferred method for collecting such data to conform with current reporting instructions for the EEO-1 Report.