EEOC Rescinds Guidance On Permissible Affirmative Action

On June 30, 2026, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced that it had rescinded two documents relating to permissible affirmative action¹ under Title VII of the U.S. Civil Rights Act: (1) its regulatory guidelines² on “appropriate” affirmative action under the statute; and (2) section 607 of its Compliance Manual, which addressed those guidelines and the agency’s enforcement positions with respect to permissible affirmative action and affirmative action plans. 

Both the guidelines and the related portion of the Compliance Manual explained that voluntary affirmative action plans were only permitted under federal equal employment opportunity laws when designed to remedy past or present discrimination or to address manifest imbalances in traditionally segregated job categories and carefully structured to avoid unlawfully disadvantaging other employees. The documents emphasized that to be lawful, a plan had to be temporary, flexible, and narrowly tailored, and could