Female correctional officers continue to report for duty at the Federal Correctional Complex in Pollock, Louisiana, a men’s prison located deep within rural Grant Parish. I’m still going through those hallways. Additionally, a federal lawsuit filed in late July 2026 claims that they are still experiencing sexual harassment that has, by all accounts, been ignored for years.
In March 2025, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission certified their case as a class complaint. There was a court case going on. Then it abruptly stopped without any prior notice or public announcement.
On July 28, 2026, the American Federation of Government Employees sued the EEOC in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, claiming that at some point prior to December 10, 2025, the commission had secretly ordered a blanket suspension of all federal-sector class action complaints. The order was never made public. There was no justification provided. There was no timeline included. In one instance, an EEOC administrative judge merely sent out a notice declaring that all processing was suspended “until further notice” and that “all scheduled deadlines and appearances are also cancelled.”
Thousands of federal employees were essentially put on hold by that one sentence.
It’s worth taking a moment to consider that. It appeared that the EEOC, the organization created by Congress under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act with the express purpose of protecting workers from discrimination, had instructed its own administrative judges to cease hearing the very cases for which it was established. This isn’t merely a policy dispute, according to the AFGE EEOC class action lawsuit. It is against the commission’s own rules, which state that class complaints “shall be processed promptly.”
Deanna Chelette and Alexzandria Boyd, the two named plaintiffs in AFGE’s lawsuit, work as correctional officers at FCC Pollock. About 200 female employees are involved in their class complaint, which claims that inmates routinely verbally harass them, make unwanted physical contact with them, threaten to rape them, and engage in “exhibitionist nudity” and public masturbation against female employees. The filing claims that the Bureau of Prisons has mostly turned a blind eye.
They had a compelling case. Federal administrative procedures typically move slowly, but they are still moving. Then it wasn’t.
According to AFGE, the harm in this case goes well beyond the named plaintiffs. Individuals who belong to a certified class are unable to pursue their own independent claims while the class proceeding is frozen due to the way the EEOC handles class certification. They are unable to withdraw. They are unable to file on their own. According to the union’s complaint, they are merely “left in limbo.”
AFGE National President Everett Kelley stated, “Justice delayed is justice denied,” following the lawsuit’s filing. This statement may sound corny, but keep in mind that the women at FCC Pollock have been waiting through more than a year of halted proceedings while the conditions they complained about are allegedly still in place.
Andrea Lucas, a Trump appointee who took over as chair of the EEOC in January 2025, has presided over several significant changes at the commission. Redirecting enforcement resources to examine employer DEI programs, deprioritizing disparate-impact cases, and lifting long-standing requirements for federal agencies to report workforce demographic data in June 2026 are some of these. All of these actions, according to critics, amount to a fundamental retreat from the EEOC’s civil rights mandate. They would probably be framed differently by supporters. The class action freeze itself is more difficult to debate because it was never made public, never explained, and seems to have no end date.
A representative for the EEOC declined to comment and directed inquiries to the Department of Justice when Federal News Network asked them to explain the suspension. The DOJ remained silent.
That non-answer has a subtle significance. An organization established to uphold civil rights legislation refused to provide an explanation for its decision to cease handling civil rights cases.
In recent months, AFGE has filed more than a dozen lawsuits against various workforce actions by the Trump administration. This one feels different, not because a union is using its political power, but rather because it revolves around a covert order that deprived employees of a legal remedy without informing them. Regardless of one’s opinions on the general direction of EEOC policy, that is more difficult to defend.
How soon the D.C. court will take action is still unknown. However, the clock has been ticking away for Pollock, Louisiana, correctional officers for a very long time.
