EEOC prepares to end EEO-1 data use, curbing enforcement

EEOC ends – The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is moving to end its annual collection of employee demographic data and to rescind a 1979 regulation that allowed certain race- and gender-conscious remedies. Supporters say the EEOC is cutting tools they believe can

For decades, the EEOC’s annual EEO-1 data collection has given federal investigators a way to spot where discrimination may be hiding in plain sight—patterns in hiring, promotion, and workforce representation that companies did not always acknowledge.

Now. as civil rights enforcement shifts under President Trump. the agency is seeking to pull back two of its most consequential tools: its yearly collection of employee demographics and a 1979 regulation that allowed employers. in limited circumstances. to take race- and gender-conscious steps after documenting imbalances.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was established by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to address entrenched discrimination in employment. In 1966, the newly established agency issued a rule to tackle that entrenched discrimination on the job. Companies with 100 or more workers were required to submit to the government information about the race. ethnicity. sex. and job categories of their employees. That annual reporting became known as the EEO-1 data.

Over decades. the EEOC’s work has led to settlements worth billions. and in many cases EEO-1 data helped the agency figure out where people of color and women were not getting hired or promoted. Under the changes being proposed. those enforcement pathways would narrow—starting with the end of the agency’s annual data collection.

The proposals have been submitted to the White House for review. Andrea Lucas, the Trump-appointed chair of the EEOC, did not respond to questions about the two proposals.

But in public remarks. Lucas has warned repeatedly that programs or policies aimed at helping specific groups—such as Black people or women—are unlawful under Title VII if they exclude others. At the Fortune Workplace Innovation Summit earlier this month. Lucas said: “Regardless of what has happened before. the way to stop discriminating based on race is to stop discriminating based on race. The end. Full stop.” She added. “I think that’s a more beautiful vision of our country. and I think it’s consistent with the text of the statute.”.

The other part of the rollback targets the legal framework that. for decades. has allowed employers to take certain steps after identifying documented disparities. The EEOC is seeking to rescind a 1979 regulation issued with a dilemma in mind: whether a company can remedy discrimination by giving special consideration to those deprived of opportunities in the past. In 1979, the agency said yes. It provided a go-ahead for mentoring programs and even hiring targets.

The January 1979 guidelines made clear that companies first had to document a problem and then come up with a reasonable and time-limited plan for increasing the number of minorities or women in their ranks.

Five months later, the Supreme Court endorsed that roadmap in a 5-2 decision known as Weber. The court found an affirmative action plan to remedy past discrimination lawful as long as it did not “unnecessarily trammel the interests of white employees” and remained temporary. In 1987, the court issued another decision, known as Johnson, extending protection to efforts aimed at helping women.

Today. the Weber-Johnson standard remains the law even if the EEOC’s 1979 regulation changes. said Chai Feldblum. who served on the commission during the Obama and first Trump administrations. Feldblum said the EEOC’s 1979 guidelines gave employers a “roadmap” for taking race and gender into account without violating the law. and for doing so in ways that weren’t unlawful.

But Feldblum also warned that the Supreme Court may eventually revisit those cases. “I think the Supreme Court is just waiting for a case that might allow them to overturn those two important cases,” she said.

Even before the Supreme Court ever becomes part of the equation, the most immediate effect—if the changes move forward—could come from the data.

The demise of the EEOC’s annual collection of employee demographics is already being felt by uncertainty. The data collection usually begins in late spring, and so far this year there has been no word of it.

For people who have spent years enforcing civil rights laws in the workplace, that matters. Karla Gilbride. who served as the EEOC’s general counsel during the Biden administration. warned that protecting workers from unlawful discrimination—already a hard task—could become significantly harder without data “within arm’s reach.” If the government no longer has the demographics. investigators may have to subpoena data. making enforcement more laborious and less efficient.

The practical stakes show up in specific cases, where the agency’s access to demographic patterns helped determine how far it could go.

A lawsuit against Bass Pro Shops—first filed in 2011—illustrates how EEO-1 data can drive investigations beyond a suspicion. The EEOC alleged that Bass Pro Outdoor World. the company’s formal name. discriminated against Black and Hispanic job applicants by not hiring them. The allegations were not limited to a single store. The EEOC accused the company of engaging in discrimination across the country. including in places with sizable Black and Hispanic populations.

David Lopez. who led the Civil Rights. Migration and Workplace Law Initiative at Arizona State University and previously served as the EEOC’s general counsel. described what investigators were able to see. “Store by store by store. sort of the same idea. where you had areas that had a significant number of Blacks and Latinos. and either zero or very few at the stores. ” he said.

The EEOC could see that pattern because it had Bass Pro’s demographic data on file. Investigators could compare Bass Pro to other retailers in the same counties, and they could compare Bass Pro’s workforce to the available pool of workers in surrounding areas.

Lopez said the data alone could not prove discrimination. But he described it as the opening that let investigators dig further. “Because they had a reason to investigate. they were able to discover that there were managerial comments that were reflective of discriminatory animus. that they were looking for a certain type of person. ” he said. Lopez added that the person the government alleged they were looking for was white.

Bass Pro called the allegations “threadbare” and accused the government of relying on “a handful of isolated incidents of alleged inappropriate behavior.”

The EEOC later bolstered its case by identifying implicated managers and job applicants by name and compiling a list of dozens of Bass Pro stores with low representation of Black and Hispanic employees.

In 2017, Bass Pro settled for $10.5 million. The company did not admit to wrongdoing. but agreed to appoint a diversity director and to make good-faith efforts to recruit and hire non-white candidates. Lopez described the settlement as a big win and said it was part of the work he oversaw at the EEOC that was built on data. “You can have a hunch, but there’s nothing like the cold, hard numbers,” he said.

Still, the EEOC chair’s push to end the data collection is grounded in a different experience of how EEO-1 information has been used.

Early indications of the EEOC’s plan appeared a year ago. when Lucas announced the opening of the 2025 data collection period. She posted a message warning employers about their obligations under federal civil rights law. writing: “You must not use the information collected and reported in your organization’s EEO-1 Component 1 report to justify treating employees differently based on their race. sex. or other protected characteristic.”.

In an interview with NPR earlier this year, Lucas explained the logic behind that warning. She said companies have misused the data, including in ways that hurt white people and men. Lucas believes the only people who should know the gender and race of a company’s employees are its lawyers and human resources staff. She pointed to a change in corporate behavior after the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a white police officer. when some companies published demographic data as part of public commitments to address a lack of diversity.

Lucas argued that companies then began using the information to make decisions about whom to hire. promote. and interview based on sex or race. and that some even gave hiring managers financial incentives to hit diversity targets. “All it has to do is motivate — in whole or in part — your decision making. and you’re into unlawful territory. ” she said. Lucas declined to name specific companies because of the confidentiality of agency investigations.

But court documents have accused the EEOC has accused Nike and The New York Times of discrimination against white employees and job applicants. Lucas said those companies, among others, published their demographic data alongside their diversity-related goals for several years.

Even as the EEOC moves toward ending data collection, Lucas has at times emphasized that collecting information can be critical. She said at a conference in April at a Harvard event organized by the Brandeis Center. an independent civil rights organization. that “There is no other way to protect victims of harassment and discrimination unless you collect information about them.”.

That statement came as Lucas defended the EEOC’s subpoena in a case involving the University of Pennsylvania. The agency sought the names, addresses, and phone numbers of Jewish employees who may have witnessed antisemitic acts on campus—information the EEOC does not routinely collect.

The university has refused to comply so far, saying in court filings that the subpoena echoes “terrifying periods of history” for Jewish communities.

For companies trying to keep up with the uncertainty, the shift has landed as a practical scramble. David Cohen. president of the management consulting firm DCI Consulting. said he has received many calls from clients who are unsure whether the work they have been doing to promote equal opportunity should continue.

For now. Cohen is telling clients to keep track of their employee demographics as a business strategy. even if federal rules change. “It’s a smart business move, whether the government requires it or not,” he said. Without demographic tracking. he said. a company has no way to know if it has a problem—whether it is recruiting from too narrow a pool. has a bad manager somewhere. or is screening out qualified candidates.

Cohen described it in terms that felt immediate. “It’s like you’re driving a car without a dashboard. You have no idea what’s going [on]. Am I speeding? Am I not speeding? Is my check-engine light on?” he said. “You have nothing.”

He added that the shift at the EEOC does not change federal civil rights laws. “Stay within the law, and you will be okay,” Cohen said.

The EEOC’s proposals—submitted for White House review. and shaped by Lucas’s insistence that helping specific groups must not cross into unlawful territory—are now poised to decide whether the agency’s enforcement future will rely on fewer data tools or a narrower set of rules for when race- and gender-conscious remedies can be justified.

For workers who have benefited from investigations supported by EEO-1 data, the question is whether enforcement will lose a clear, repeatable way to find discrimination patterns before they become entrenched.

For employers worried about misuse of demographic information, the question is whether the EEOC can enforce Title VII’s protections without giving companies a dataset that can be pushed into decisions Lucas says cross the legal line.

EEOC EEO-1 data Title VII civil rights employment discrimination Andrea Lucas Bass Pro Shops George Floyd Weber Johnson affirmative action