The federal agency created to enforce civil rights law voted Tuesday to scrap a six-decade-old requirement forcing tens of thousands of American employers to submit annual workforce demographic reports to the government.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s Republican majority voted 2-1 to rescind the so-called EEO-1 data collection rule, which since 1966 has required companies with at least 100 employees to report the race, ethnicity, and sex of their workers across job categories to the EEOC. The proposal now enters a 30-day public comment period before final approval.
EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas said the rule creates the wrong incentives. “It may promote racial stereotyping at work, and it may encourage employers to engage in discrimination,” Lucas said at a hearing ahead of the vote.
The EEO-1 form covers more than 50 million employees and roughly 73,000 employers nationwide. Lucas also cited the compliance burden the rule imposes on businesses, arguing that mandatory demographic reporting costs employers “hundreds of millions of dollars” with no allegation, indication, or evidence of discrimination to justify it.
The Biden-era EEOC had collected EEO-1 data through 2024 but had not yet released it publicly. Collection of data for 2025 would have begun this year under the old rule.
The lone Democrat remaining on the commission, Commissioner Kalpana Kotagal, voted against the proposal. “Today, the commission discusses whether to turn back time to a period before the civil rights movement, kneecapping its ability to protect workers,” Kotagal said.
Former Democratic EEOC commissioners denounced the move, arguing the annual demographic data helps investigators detect patterns of workplace discrimination and that companies are not, in practice, using it to set racial quotas.
The EEOC receives more than 88,000 worker complaints each year. The agency has historically used EEO-1 data to set enforcement priorities and support certain discrimination investigations.
The rescission aligns with recommendations laid out in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation blueprint that has shaped much of the Trump administration’s regulatory agenda.
The vote marks the latest step in the administration’s broader rollback of diversity, equity, and inclusion requirements across the federal government and private sector.
