Key Findings
Headlines about workplace discrimination are dominated by nine-figure verdicts and landmark decrees. The EEOC’s own announcement record tells a more useful story: what employers actually pay when a discrimination case resolves.
- The typical announced resolution is $110,000 — the average is misleading. Half of all announced cases resolve between $50K and $350K. The mean ($817,329) sits 7× above the median because 30 mega-resolutions of $10M+ — 1.3% of cases — hold 45% of all dollars, while the 1,075 cases under $100K hold just 2.8%.
- Race and national-origin cases carry the highest per-case median ($200,000). Sex/gender/pregnancy cases dominate total dollars ($514M across 749 announced cases), but the typical race case resolves higher. Disability (ADA) cases are the second-most-announced basis yet resolve lowest among the major categories (median $80,000).
- The jury-verdict premium is mostly an illusion. The median announced verdict ($850,000) runs 7.7× the median settlement — but Title VII caps compensatory and punitive damages at $50K–$300K by employer size, and courts apply the cap after the verdict. A $125M disability verdict against Walmart in 2021 became $300K. Settlements, not verdicts, are where discrimination cases actually pay.
- Consent decrees are the EEOC’s workhorse. 1,850 of 2,386 announced resolutions (78%) are court-supervised consent decrees holding $1.50B — the agency strongly prefers resolutions a judge can enforce for years.
- The era of routine announcements changed the numbers. In the 1990s the EEOC announced only landmark cases (36 announced resolutions, median $1.9M). Since the 2010s it announces routine resolutions too — median $90,000 across 1,270 cases. Comparing decade medians measures announcement policy as much as case value — which is why we publish the full distribution.