Much research examines the organizational changes brought by equal employment opportunity (EEO) law, but it remains unclear whether establishments formally charged with employment discrimination and found in violation of EEO laws actually improve workplace conditions for women and racial minorities. Building on economic and institutional accounts of organizational responses to legal intervention, this article assesses the effects of discrimination charges and their resolutions on changes in establishment-level occupational segregation by sex and race from 1990 to 2002. Using data from a national random sample of work establishments matched to discriminationcharge data, I examine the direct impact of charges on workplaces, as well as the indirect pressures that establishments experience in their legal and organizational environments. For sex segregation, I find that establishments do not desegregate in the wake of discrimination charges filed directly against them, but they do respond to EEO enforcement in their industrial fields and legal environments. For race segregation, organizational factors—rather than legal intervention—are the primary predictors of desegregation. To the extent that EEO enforcement encourages organizational change, it does so indirectly, operating through establishments' industrial and legal environments.
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