Legal Overview of P.L. 107-174, the Notification and Federal Employee Antidiscrimination and Retaliation Act of 2002

RS21778 -- Legal Overview of P.L. 107-174, the Notification and Federal Employee Antidiscrimination and Retaliation Act of 2002

March 25, 2004

Summary

In the Notification and Federal Employee Antidiscrimination and Retaliation Act, (No FEAR Act), P.L. 107-174, Congress found that federal agencies lacked accountability for enforcement of federal anti-discrimination and whistleblower statutes since any monetary judgment against an agency was paid from the Judgment Fund of the U.S. Department of Justice, rather than the agency's own operating budget. The Act addresses the problem by requiring agencies to reimburse the Treasury for any judgment or settlement of federal employee discrimination or whistleblower reprisal claims. In addition, individual agencies and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission must post annual statistics on their websites, setting forth the numbers of complaints filed, pending, and resolved; the amount paid out on such claims; the number of employees disciplined for discrimination, retaliation, or harassment; and an examination of any trends in those statistics, including a causal analysis, the practical knowledge obtained in the process, and any planned or completed improvements made to the complaint resolution procedures of each agency.