EEOC voted 2-1 to advance proposed rule rescinding 60-year employer demographic reporting requirement

On July 21, 2026, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission voted 2-1 along party lines to advance a Trump administration proposal to eliminate the EEO-1 Component 1 reporting requirement, which since 1966 has required private employers with 100 or more workers—and state and local governments with 100 or more employees—to annually submit demographic data on their workforce's sex, race, and ethnicity. The proposed rule, already submitted to the Federal Register, opens a 30-day public comment period, with a public hearing scheduled for August 11, 2026 (requests to testify due August 7).

The EEO-1 data is a primary tool the EEOC and private litigants use to identify patterns of employment discrimination and enforce Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the Equal Pay Act, and related federal antidiscrimination statutes. In its proposed rule, the commission contended that demographic reporting requirements create an "impermissible focus on 'minorities' and women" and argued the forms "may encourage employers to discriminate against employees who are not considered 'minorities.'"

Labor economists and civil rights advocates warned that eliminating the data collection would impair the agency's ability to enforce the law. "The effectiveness of those laws is really dependent on our ability to enforce those laws. And the enforcement of those laws is facilitated by having consistent reliable data," said Valerie Rawlston Wilson, director of the Economic Policy Institute's Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy. The vote was taken on Black Women's Equal Pay Day—the date marking how far into the year Black women must work to equal the previous year's earnings of a white man, a gap the EEO-1 data has historically been used to document and address.