EEOC holds hearing about the future of the equal employment opportunity data collection

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Andrea Lucas, chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), held a public hearing in Washington, DC, on August 11 about the future of EEO reporting, and the commission’s plan to discontinue the data collection.

More than 20 speakers addressed the commission, and many of them expressed concern about ending demographic data collection, with some questioning Lucas’s rationale for ending the reports.

Catch up. The EEOC issued a proposal to rescind the data collection in May, after 60 years of EEO-1 reporting, HR Brew reported previously.

Lucas has claimed, without evidence, that EEO reporting is cumbersome for employers, and could encourage employers to engage in “discriminatory” practices in an effort to diversify their workforce, the Associated Press reported.

“It may promote racial stereotyping at work, and it may encourage employers to engage in discrimination,” Lucas said at a public hearing in July. (Her comments at the August 11 hearing were limited to introducing the committee and the topic at hand.)

Advocates respond. Experts both in favor of and opposed to the rescission spoke about the EEOC’s upcoming changes. The majority of speakers opposed the EEOC’s plan to end EEO data reporting, and several equality advocates noted that the Commission has not produced evidence to support Lucas’s assertion that data has been used to advance “illegal DEI” or pursue quotas.

“We believe that this proposal would result in the elimination of one of the key data sources that both employers and the EEOC can use and do use to detect and to end illegal DEI and unlawful discrimination,” said David Fortney, a cofounder of law firm Fortney & Scott who works with the Institute for Workplace Equality, adding that the organization has not found instances of EEO data misuse. “Presumably, after six decades, if the agency had specific instances, it would have called those out.”

Amalea Smirniotopoulos, senior policy counsel at the Legal Defense Fund, opposed the EEOC’s proposal, because it could make it harder for people to advance in the workplace. “These changes will harm all workers, but particularly Black workers and other workers of color who continue to face racial discrimination more frequently,” Smirniotopoulos said. “It will hamper the agency’s ability to identify discrimination.”

Melvina Ford, national legal director at Equal Rights Advocates, fears that the EEOC will not be able to identify sex-based discrimination without regular data collection. “It’s unclear how the EEOC will effectively and fairly target its outreach and enforcement resources without this data,” she said, adding that the rule change would lead to employer confusion. “To be clear, erasing this data will not erase the discrimination; it will just erase the evidence.”

Karla Gilbride, deputy director of the disability rights program with the ACLU and lawyer for the EEO Leaders nonprofit organizations, said that both organizations oppose the proposal, in part because EEO data facilitates the EEOC’s overall mission. “The data is especially important when investigating claims of widespread hiring discrimination,” she said, adding that EEO reports allow the EEOC to efficiently deploy its limited resources.

In 2020, the EEOC had fewer than 2,000 full-time employees, a nearly 40-year low, but the demands and workforce has continued to grow, according to the 2024 fiscal year budget. The commission also decreased its proposed FY 2026 budget by $20 million compared to 2025.

The change could also negatively impact employers, even if they continue collecting the data for internal use. “It will be much harder for them to benchmark themselves against their peers without the EEOC’s nationwide and industry-wide data,” Gilbride said.

Still, there were some that spoke in support of the EEOC’s proposed rule recision. Greg Scott, executive vice president for the anti-DEI nonprofit 1792 Exchange, supported the change based on the commission’s own stated reasons.

“That change would free businesses from the pressure of perfecting numbers for federal forms, so they can return to their core mission, which is producing goods and services,” he said, adding that he believes civil rights law is meant to enshrine a “colorblind” society. “A spreadsheet alone does not provide a full or reliable picture of whether discrimination is occurring.”

The proposed rule change will remain open for public comment until Aug. 24 and is expected to become final.