38 U.S.C. § 516 — Equal employment responsibilities

(a)(1) The Secretary must establish and administer the Department’s employment-discrimination complaint-resolution system to encourage concerns and complaints to be resolved promptly and fairly. The Secretary must ensure that the system is objective, fair, and effective, and that employees and other interested parties perceive it that way. (2) The Secretary must ensure that the system requires any Department manager who receives a sexual or other harassment complaint or an employment-discrimination complaint to report it to the Office of Resolution Management, or its successor office, immediately. If immediate reporting is impracticable, the manager must report it no later than two days after receiving the complaint. (b) The Secretary must provide: (1) Employees responsible for counseling about employment discrimination and for receiving, investigating, and processing employment-discrimination complaints must be supervised in those duties by, and report to, an Assistant Secretary or Deputy Assistant Secretary for complaint-resolution management, as provided in subsection (h)(2). (2) Employees who perform employment-discrimination complaint-resolution duties at a Department facility may not be subject to the facility director’s authority, direction, or control for those duties. (c)(1) The Secretary must ensure that all Department employees receive adequate education and training for this section and section 319. (2)(A) No later than 180 days after enactment of the Joseph Maxwell Cleland and Robert Joseph Dole Memorial Veterans Benefits and Health Care Improvement Act of 2022, the Secretary must give every Department employee mandatory annual training on identifying and addressing sexual and other harassment and employment discrimination, including the processes under the Department’s Harassment Prevention Program or a successor program. (B) An employee hired on or after that date must receive the first mandatory annual training no later than 60 days after being hired. (d) When appropriate and as authorized by law, the Secretary must impose discipline on Department employees who engage in unlawful employment discrimination, including retaliation against an employee asserting rights under an equal-employment-opportunity law. (e)(1)(A) No later than 45 days after the end of each calendar quarter, the Secretary must send the Senate and House Committees on Veterans’ Affairs a report summarizing employment-discrimination complaints filed during that quarter against the officers and employees listed in paragraph (2). (B) This reporting rule applies when the complaint is based on the individual’s personal conduct. It does not apply when the complaint is based only on the individual’s position as a Department official. (2) Paragraph (1) covers complaints against these Department officers and employees: (A) the Secretary; (B) the Deputy Secretary of Veterans Affairs; (C) the Under Secretary for Health and the Under Secretary for Benefits; (D) each Assistant Secretary of Veterans Affairs and each Deputy Assistant Secretary of Veterans Affairs; (E) the Under Secretary of Veterans Affairs for Memorial Affairs; (F) the Department’s General Counsel; (G) the Chairman of the Board of Veterans’ Appeals; (H) the Chairman of the Department’s Board of Contract Appeals; (I) the director and chief of staff of each Department medical center; (J) the director of each Veterans Integrated Services Network; (K) the director of each Department regional office; and (L) each program director of the Department’s Central Office. (3) Each report under this subsection: (A) may not disclose information identifying the people who filed the complaints, the people who are the subjects of the complaints, or the facilities where the alleged discrimination occurred; (B) must summarize the complaints by type and by the Equal Employment Opportunity field-office area where they were filed; and (C) must include copies of the complaints with the information described in subparagraph (A) redacted. (4) No later than April 1 each year, the Assistant Secretary must send the committees identified in paragraph (1)(A) a report about the complaints covered by paragraph (1) during the preceding year. The report must include the number filed during that year and the status and resolution of the investigations. (f) The Secretary must ensure that a Department employee seeking counseling about employment discrimination may choose counseling from a Department employee who performs equal-employment-opportunity counseling full time, rather than from an employee who performs those duties part time. (g)(1)(A) Except as provided in paragraph (4), from the enactment date of the Joseph Maxwell Cleland and Robert Joseph Dole Memorial Veterans Benefits and Health Care Improvement Act of 2022 through the date three years after enactment, the number of Department employees whose duties include equal-employment-opportunity counseling may not exceed 76 full-time-equivalent employees. (B) Except as provided in paragraph (4), beginning three years after enactment, that number may not exceed 81 full-time-equivalent employees. (2) Except as provided in paragraph (4), of the 76 full-time-equivalent employees in paragraph (1), no more than 40 may be Department employees whose duties include both equal-employment-opportunity counseling and other unrelated duties. (3) Except as provided in paragraph (4), an employee described in paragraph (2) may be assigned equal-employment-opportunity counseling duties only at Department facilities in remote geographic locations. (4)(A) Beginning one year after enactment of the Act named in paragraph (1), the Secretary must promptly notify Congress if, at any time, the number of full-time-equivalent Department employees specified in paragraph (1), whose duties include equal-opportunity counseling, is not enough for the Department to meet its legal obligations. (B) The notice must include: (i) the specific legal obligations concerning employment discrimination, or other matters similar to those covered by Equal Employment Opportunity Commission regulations, that the Department cannot meet; and (ii) the total additional number of full-time-equivalent Department employees needed to meet those obligations. (h)(1) This section must be implemented consistently with procedures applicable under Equal Employment Opportunity Commission regulations. (2) No later than 90 days after enactment of the Act named in subsection (g)(1), in carrying out paragraph (1), the Secretary must ensure that the Department official serving as the Department’s Equal Employment Opportunity Director: (A) reports directly to the Deputy Secretary for functions under this section; and (B) does not also hold a position responsible for Department personnel functions or other functions that conflict with the functions under this section. (i) Consistent with subsection (b), no later than one year after enactment of the Act named in subsection (g)(1), the Secretary must ensure that each Department facility-level Equal Employment Opportunity program manager reports to the head of the Office of Resolution Management, or a successor office established under subsection (a), for the program manager’s equal-employment functions.