Lex Machina 2026 Employment Litigation Report: Federal Discrimination and Disability Accommodation Lawsuits Surge

San Jose, CA, March 10, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- LexisNexis® Legal & Professional today announced the release of the Lex Machina® 2026 Employment Litigation Report, which provides a highly detailed analysis of trends in federal employment lawsuits since 2016. Exclusive insights from the report provide law offices with actionable, data-driven insights to better assess risk, strategy, and outcomes in modern workplace disputes.Key findings from the report include:Surge in disability accommodation cases: Employment cases involving federal claims that employers failed to provide reasonable accommodation for qualified individuals with disabilities have increased sharply. In 2025, plaintiffs filed 6,796 such cases, representing a single-year record and a year-to-year increase of about 42 percent. In addition to long-term health issues associated with Covid-19, recent large damage awards in disability accommodation lawsuits have likely encouraged further filings.Heightened focus on discrimination issues: Since 2022, claims under federal laws that prohibit adverse employment actions or unwelcome conduct against individuals in protected classes, or against employees who engaged in legally protected activity, have risen above pre-COVID averages. The year 2025 marked the first time that plaintiffs filed more than 20,000 federal discrimination lawsuits, likely tied in part to developments in case law that reinforced certain routes of recovery for employment-discrimination plaintiffs.Increasing proportion of pro se plaintiffs: The proportion of federal employment lawsuits with unrepresented plaintiffs grew each year from 2021 through 2025, rising nearly 3 percentage points last year alone. In 2025, more than 16 percent of federal employment lawsuits were filed by individual plaintiffs without legal representation, from under 10 percent in 2021. The consequences can ...Full story available on Benzinga.com