EEOC Mediation Resolutions, Fiscal Year 2020

Charges resolved through the EEOC's voluntary mediation program, and the monetary relief obtained through it.

EEOC's mediation program is the fastest, most voluntary, and most predictable resolution channel in the agency's entire enforcement ecosystem — both parties have to agree to participate, the process is confidential, and a successful mediation closes the charge without a formal investigation, cause finding, or litigation ever occurring. That voluntary, bilateral structure means the mediation resolution rate is as much a measure of employer and claimant willingness to negotiate directly as it is a measure of EEOC's own program capacity, and both figures — mediations conducted and the resulting resolution rate — should be read together rather than in isolation.

Duration for mediated resolutions is the shortest in EEOC's process by a wide margin, typically resolving within weeks of both parties agreeing to participate, which makes the mediation channel the clearest opportunity for an employer to control both the timeline and, within negotiated bounds, the financial outcome of a charge before it enters the longer and less controllable investigation-and-litigation track. An employer's own participation rate in EEOC mediation, tracked internally against the program's published resolution rate, is a useful benchmark for whether the employer is using the fastest available resolution channel as often as the broader employer population.

For insurers, the benefits-obtained figure from mediation is a lower-cost, faster-resolving component of total EPLI exposure relative to litigation or even administrative settlement following a full investigation, and a book of insured employers with high mediation participation and resolution rates should show a different loss-development pattern — faster average time-to-close, and typically lower average per-charge cost — than a comparable book where mediation is used less frequently or fails more often to produce agreement.

Resolution through mediation is binary and immediate once it occurs: the parties either reach a negotiated agreement, closing the charge with defined monetary and non-monetary terms, or mediation fails and the charge returns to the standard investigation queue with no additional delay attributable to the mediation attempt itself. Criterica Intelligence frames mediation participation and resolution rates as the controllable, fast-resolution end of EEOC charge exposure, distinct from the longer and less controllable investigation and litigation tracks, for the employers, insurers, and funders that want the clearest read on where an employer's own choices can shorten the resolution timeline.

Figures on this page are drawn from official agency publications, cited individually below, and reflect the agency’s own reporting as of the date shown for each figure. They are not Criterica Intelligence model outputs, are not predictions, and are not a measure of any party’s legal exposure or liability. Agencies periodically revise prior-year figures; where a revision is known, both figures are shown with their sources. This page does not constitute legal, investment, or compliance advice.