17 states have no in-person EEOC office — and 2.4 million foreign-born residents live in them

Name: In-person EEOC office access by state — foreign-born residents per field office, and the states with none (2026)
Creator: MigrantUSA
License: https://migrantusa.com/terms/

In-person EEOC field-office access for all 50 states and DC, joined to the Census foreign-born population. 17 states have no EEOC field office at all — 2,409,747 foreign-born residents live in them. Among states that do have one, the ratio runs from 71,918 foreign-born per office (Mississippi) to 2,452,864 (Florida), a 34.1× spread, against a national 910,559. The states with the most immigrant workers carry the fewest offices.

Where an immigrant worker can’t reach an EEOC office in person

The finding: the EEOC enforces the laws against workplace discrimination — including the national-origin and language discrimination immigrant workers are most exposed to — through in-person field offices where a charge can be filed against a strict deadline. Join the office locator to the Census foreign-born population and two things fall out that are published nowhere else.

First, 17 states have no EEOC field office at all, and 2,409,747 foreign-born residents live in them. The largest are Connecticut (569,177 foreign-born, no office), Oregon (418,367) and Utah (302,552).

Second, among the states that do have an office, coverage runs backward from need. The five most stretched:

State	EEOC offices	Foreign-born residents	Per office
Florida	2	4,905,727	2,452,864
New York	2	4,526,014	2,263,007
New Jersey	1	2,236,554	2,236,554
Illinois	1	1,872,449	1,872,449
California	6	10,598,301	1,766,384

Nationally there is one in-person EEOC office for every 910,559 foreign-born residents. The best-covered state, Mississippi, has one office for 71,918 — a 34.1× spread from the worst-covered state to the best. New Jersey and Illinois each run a single office for well over a million foreign-born residents.

Every state — no-office states first, then worst-covered

EEOC offices located in each state and foreign-born residents per office. Office counts are from the EEOC locator (re-verified 2026-07-22); foreign-born population is the ACS 5-year estimate. Filing a charge does not require an office — the EEOC takes charges online, by mail and in person — so this measures in-person reach.

17 states have no in-person EEOC office at all — 2,409,747 foreign-born residents live in them

State with no office	Foreign-born	% of state
Connecticut	569,177	15.7%
Oregon	418,367	9.8%
Utah	302,552	8.9%
Iowa	189,988	5.9%
Rhode Island	168,502	15.3%
Nebraska	159,084	8.0%
Idaho	114,849	5.9%
Delaware	109,282	10.7%
New Hampshire	85,632	6.1%
Alaska	56,745	7.7%
Maine	56,448	4.1%
North Dakota	36,962	4.7%
South Dakota	35,988	4.0%
West Virginia	32,329	1.8%
Vermont	27,669	4.3%
Montana	25,679	2.3%
Wyoming	20,494	3.5%

"No office" means no EEOC office located inside the state; every location is still within some office's jurisdictional area. It is a distance measure, not "no coverage."

States with an office — worst-covered first

State	EEOC offices	Foreign-born	Per office
Florida	2	4,905,727	2,452,864
New York	2	4,526,014	2,263,007
New Jersey	1	2,236,554	2,236,554
Illinois	1	1,872,449	1,872,449
California	6	10,598,301	1,766,384
Texas	4	5,302,466	1,325,616
Massachusetts	1	1,271,206	1,271,206
Washington	1	1,206,843	1,206,843
Maryland	1	1,030,670	1,030,670
Arizona	1	957,784	957,784
Michigan	1	728,881	728,881
Georgia	2	1,222,778	611,389
Nevada	1	609,066	609,066
Colorado	1	576,653	576,653
Virginia	2	1,142,826	571,413
Pennsylvania	2	1,004,975	502,488
Minnesota	1	497,722	497,722
Indiana	1	431,255	431,255
North Carolina	3	973,325	324,442
Ohio	2	616,102	308,051
Wisconsin	1	306,979	306,979
South Carolina	1	305,101	305,101
Missouri	1	277,967	277,967
Hawaii	1	259,001	259,001
Oklahoma	1	256,215	256,215
Louisiana	1	224,537	224,537
Kansas	1	216,817	216,817
Tennessee	2	431,545	215,772
Kentucky	1	211,210	211,210
New Mexico	1	199,738	199,738
Arkansas	1	165,740	165,740
Alabama	2	203,578	101,789
District of Columbia	1	97,388	97,388
Mississippi	1	71,918	71,918

Marked rows are above the national average of 910,559 foreign-born residents per office. Sources: EEOC office locator and the Census Bureau ACS. National-origin and language discrimination are EEOC's (Title VII); discrimination over citizenship or immigration status is also handled by the Department of Justice (IER).

What the data shows

Whole states have no office. Seventeen states — including Connecticut and Rhode Island, both around 15% foreign-born — have no EEOC field office located in them at all. The nearest in-person office is across a state line.
Coverage runs backward from need. Florida, New York, New Jersey and Illinois sit at the top of the per-office table, not the bottom. New Jersey’s 2,236,554 foreign-born residents and Illinois’s 1,872,449 are each served by one office.
The gap is large. One office per 71,918 foreign-born residents in Mississippi, one per 2,452,864 in Florida: the same federal enforcement system is roughly 34.1× more reachable in person, per resident, in the best-covered state than the worst.
An office is not required to file — but a deadline is. Charges can be filed online, by mail or in person, yet the clock is short (as little as 180 days). Where in-person help is out of state, the workers who most need an interview or language assistance are the ones who have to travel for it.

Why this matters for immigrant workers

National-origin discrimination — being treated worse because of where you or your family come from, your accent, or a language policy — is one of the bases the EEOC enforces under Title VII, along with retaliation for speaking up. To act on it, a worker files a Charge of Discrimination, and the deadline can be as short as 180 calendar days from the incident (extended to 300 where a state or local agency enforces the same law). That charge can go in online, by mail, or in person at a field office, and staff can help by phone with an interpreter.

For many immigrant workers the in-person office is not a formality: it is where a limited-English worker gets an interview, where evidence is handed over, where the process is explained by a person rather than a portal. In the 17 states with no office, and in the single-office states carrying millions of immigrant residents, that channel is simply farther away. Discrimination that turns on citizenship or immigration status, rather than national origin, is handled by a separate office — the Department of Justice’s Immigrant and Employee Rights Section — and some situations can be reported to both.

Method and caveats

Office counts are the in-person EEOC field offices located in each state, from the EEOC locator, counted by office and re-verified against the live locator in July 2026 (53 offices nationwide, unchanged from a May reading). Foreign-born population is the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey 2024 5-year estimate. The ratio is foreign-born residents divided by in-person offices in the state.

Four limits are stated plainly. A field office is not required to file — the EEOC takes charges online, by mail and in person, so “no office” measures in-person reach, not access. Every location is under some office’s jurisdiction — an office’s area crosses state lines, so a state with no office located in it is still covered by a neighboring office; this is a travel-distance measure, not “no coverage.” National origin is EEOC; citizenship status is also DOJ — the two are not conflated. And “foreign-born” includes naturalized citizens, so it is a broad immigrant-workforce proxy, not a count of any protected group. Puerto Rico is excluded because ACS foreign-born is not comparable there.

Download the data: eeoc_office_access.json — all 50 states and DC, office count, foreign-born population, residents per office, and the full list of no-office states.

Suggested citation: MigrantUSA, “In-person EEOC office access by state, 2026,” https://migrantusa.com/datasets/eeoc-office-access-by-state/ (accessed [date]).

Newsrooms, worker centers, legal-aid and immigrant-services organizations: drop in the panel below. It shows the states with no in-person office and the national per-office ratio, and updates when we refresh the counts.

<iframe src="https://migrantusa.com/embed/eeoc-office-access/" width="100%" height="520"
        style="border:1px solid #e2e8e4;border-radius:8px;max-width:640px"
        title="In-person EEOC office access by state" loading="lazy"></iframe>
<p style="font-size:12px">Source: <a href="https://migrantusa.com/datasets/eeoc-office-access-by-state/">MigrantUSA — EEOC office access by state</a></p>

Frequently asked questions

What does this dataset measure?

For each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia, it counts the in-person EEOC field offices physically located in the state and divides the state’s foreign-born population by that number. The result is how many foreign-born residents there are for each in-person office — a measure of how reachable the workplace-discrimination enforcement system is in person, for the workers most exposed to national-origin and language discrimination. It also flags the states with no field office at all. Office counts are from the EEOC locator, re-verified against the live locator in July 2026 (53 offices nationwide, unchanged since a May reading); the foreign-born population is the Census Bureau’s 2024 American Community Survey 5-year estimate.

Which states have no in-person EEOC office?

Seventeen: Connecticut, Oregon, Utah, Iowa, Rhode Island, Nebraska, Idaho, Delaware, New Hampshire, Alaska, Maine, North Dakota, South Dakota, West Virginia, Vermont, Montana and Wyoming. Together they are home to 2,409,747 foreign-born residents. Connecticut alone has 569,177 — a state that is nearly 16% foreign-born with no EEOC office located in it. This does not mean those workers have no way to reach the EEOC: every location falls under some office’s jurisdictional area, and a charge can be filed online, by mail, or by phone. It means the nearest in-person office is out of state.

If my state has no office, can I still file a charge?

Yes. A field office is not required. The EEOC accepts a Charge of Discrimination through its online Public Portal, by mail, and in person at an office, and staff can help by phone (1-800-669-4000) with an interpreter. In-person access still matters — for a worker with limited English, for handing over documents, for an interview, and because the deadline to file is strict (as little as 180 calendar days, extended to 300 in states with a matching state or local agency). But no office in your state is not the same as no way to file.

Is national-origin discrimination the same as citizenship-status discrimination?

No, and the dataset does not treat them as the same. National-origin, language and retaliation discrimination at work are enforced by the EEOC under Title VII. Discrimination based on citizenship, visa or immigration status — and unfair documentary practices during hiring — is also handled by a separate office, the Department of Justice’s Immigrant and Employee Rights Section (IER). Some situations involve both, and can be reported to both. This dataset is about reaching an EEOC office; it links the IER for the status-based questions the EEOC does not cover alone.

Why use foreign-born population rather than a specific protected group?

Because no source publishes, by state, the number of workers who experience national-origin discrimination. Foreign-born population is the closest available proxy for the immigrant workforce that these protections are most relevant to. It is broad: it includes naturalized U.S. citizens. It is used to compare in-person access across states on a consistent basis, not to count any specific group of charging parties. Puerto Rico, which has its own EEOC office in San Juan, is excluded because the Census concept of ‘foreign-born’ is not comparable there.

Can I reuse this data?

Yes. The JSON file is free to download and reuse, including commercially, with attribution to MigrantUSA and a link to this page. The office locations and the Census population figures are U.S. government public-domain data; the join, the per-office computation, the coverage read, and the structuring are ours.

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General information, not legal advice. MigrantUSA is an independent publisher and is not a law firm; using this site does not create an attorney-client relationship, and this content is not a substitute for advice from a licensed attorney about your specific situation. US federal, state, and local government procedures, fees, and forms change. Always verify current details directly with the relevant agency before acting. For immigration, tax, or other legal matters specific to your situation, consult a licensed attorney or BIA-accredited representative.