118
Opinion of the Court
debates over the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972, amending the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the text of the EEOC procedural regulations, including the predecessor of § 1601.12(b), was placed in the Congressional Record. 118 Cong. Rec. 718 (1972). By then the regulation was six years old, and had been upheld and applied by the federal courts.16
By amending the law without repudiating the regulation, Congress "suggests its consent to the Commission's practice." EEOC v. Associated Dry Goods Corp., 449 U. S. 590, 600, n. 17 (1981); see also EEOC v. Shell Oil Co., 466 U. S. 54, 69 (1984).
III
We accordingly hold the EEOC's relation-back regulation to be an unassailable interpretation of § 706 and therefore reverse. Our judgment does not, however, reach the conclusion drawn by the District Court, and the single judge on the Court of Appeals, that Edelman's letter was not a charge under the statute because neither he nor the EEOC
§ 706(b). Ibid. So modified, the amendment was adopted by voice vote and enacted into law.
Besides refining the language of § 706 of Title VII, the 1972 amendments extended the basic time period for filing a charge with the EEOC from 90 to 180 days, and from 210 to 300 days in deferral States. Pub. L. 92-261, 86 Stat. 104. Congress also added a requirement that the EEOC notify employers within 10 days of receiving a filed charge. Ibid. In view of the above-described exchange over the phrasing of the verification requirement, and because Congress enacted this requirement while at the same time amending the charge-filing deadline in § 706(e), respondent advocates our reading the 1972 amendments as a "congressional compromise." Brief for Respondent 24. We are asked, in other words, to conclude that Congress lengthened the time for filing charges only because Congress, at the same time, required that a charge necessarily be verified when first filed. The evidence for such a quid pro quo is, however, equivocal.
16 See, e. g., Blue Bell Boots, Inc. v. EEOC, 418 F. 2d 355, 357 (CA6 1969); Georgia Power Co. v. EEOC, 412 F. 2d 462, 466-467 (CA5 1969); Weeks v. Southern Bell Tel. & Tel. Co., 408 F. 2d 228, 230-231 (CA5 1969); Choate v. Caterpillar Tractor Co., 402 F. 2d 357, 359-360 (CA7 1968).
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