Commission Membership

David Lopez
Employment discrimination lawyer, Outten & Golden, former general counsel of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)

Bio

David Lopez is of Counsel at Outten & Golden, in the firm’s Washington, DC office, after resigning as a Partner in July 2018 to become the Dean of Rutgers Law School - Newark. Mr. Lopez served as General Counsel of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) from April 8, 2010 until December 9, 2016 – the longest serving General Counsel of the agency. Mr. Lopez was nominated twice by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the Senate in 2010 and 2014.  Mr. Lopez is the first EEOC field trial attorney to be appointed as the agency's General Counsel.  As General Counsel, Mr. Lopez was in charge of the Commission's litigation program, overseeing the agency's 15 Regional Attorneys and a staff of more than 325 lawyers and legal professionals who conduct or support Commission litigation in district and appellate courts across the country.  He has served at the Commission in various capacities for the past 22 years, including as Supervisory Trial Attorney in the Phoenix District Office and Special Assistant to then-Chairman Gilbert F. Casellas. Mr. Lopez has been a Lecturer-in-Law at Harvard Law School and an Adjunct Professor at the Georgetown Law Center.

Under his leadership, the EEOC's trial program was extremely successful. Among the notable victories is the $240 million jury verdict - the Commission's largest award ever - in Henry's Turkey Service, a case brought on behalf of over thirty intellectually disabled men; a $17 million jury verdict for farmworker women victims of sexual harassment and retaliation in Moreno Farms, Inc.; and a $1.5 million sexual harassment and retaliation verdict affirmed by the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Breed Logistics.