You may already know that in late July, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) voted 2-1 to propose rescinding the federal requirements for EEO-1 through EEO-6 reports, along with related recordkeeping obligations, and published the proposal in the Federal Register on July 23. Why? The Commission’s leadership believes that mandatory demographic reporting isn’t necessary to enforce federal equal employment laws and may sit in tension with Title VII’s command that employment decisions be made without regard to race or sex and imposes real costs on employers. By the agency’s estimate, nearly $275 million is spent annually by employers preparing these reports.
Just last week, the EEOC held a public hearing on its proposal to eliminate the EEO-1 report and related demographic data-collection requirements. But before you shred anything, read the next sentence twice: This is only a proposal, and nothing has changed. The EEO-1 requirement remains in effect.
The Aug. 11 hearing ran more than two hours and featured 22 witnesses, with the testimony sharply split. A majority urged the EEOC to keep, modernize or otherwise preserve standardized demographic reporting; only six speakers backed the rescission proposal. The proposal’s opponents raised practical arguments: as they said, eliminating the EEO-1 might not actually lighten anyone’s load. Even the current proposal allows the EEOC to still be able to demand records in investigations, and state agencies and private plaintiffs could seek the same information through subpoenas and litigation. The real choice, these witnesses argued, may not be “collect the data or don’t,” it may be “collect standardized data routinely or scramble to reconstruct it whenever a regulator or plaintiff asks.”
The comment period has been active. Nearly 1,500 comments had reportedly come in as of the hearing, and the EEOC must weigh the written comments and testimony before it finalizes, modifies or withdraws the proposal.
The practical takeaway is simple: Keep filing. Continue following existing EEO-1 reporting and recordkeeping requirements unless and until a final rule says otherwise.
