The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is pursuing two major policy changes that would fundamentally alter how the federal government combats workplace discrimination. The agency, established under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, is seeking to end its annual collection of workforce demographic data known as EEO-1 reports while also moving to rescind a 1979 regulation that provided employers a legal roadmap for addressing race and gender imbalances in their workplaces.
The dual proposals, submitted to the White House for review, represent what experts describe as a significant realignment of civil rights enforcement under President Trump. The EEO-1 data collection has required companies with 100 or more workers to annually submit information about the race, ethnicity, sex, and job categories of their employees since 1966. Andrea Lucas, the Trump-appointed chair of the EEOC, did not respond to requests for comment on the proposals.
What the Left Is Saying
Progressive advocates and former agency officials warn that eliminating these tools would severely hamper efforts to identify and address discrimination in the workplace. Karla Gilbride, who served as the EEOC's general counsel during the Biden administration, said protecting U.S. workers from unlawful discrimination could become significantly harder without easily accessible demographic data.
"It's one of the first things that you can look at as you're trying to learn more," Gilbride said in reference to EEO-1 data.
Chai Feldblum, who served on the commission during both the Obama and first Trump administrations, emphasized the importance of the 1979 regulation. "The EEOC says you can take some of these voluntary efforts, even though they will be race- or gender-conscious," Feldblum said. "This is the EEOC giving employers the roadmap of how they can take race and gender into account in a positive way and not violate the law."
David Lopez, former EEOC general counsel who now leads the Civil Rights, Migration and Workplace Law Initiative at Arizona State University, pointed to past enforcement successes built on demographic data. "You can have a hunch, but there's nothing like the cold, hard numbers," Lopez said.
What the Right Is Saying
Chair Andrea Lucas has argued that programs or policies aimed at helping specific groups are unlawful under Title VII if they exclude others. "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," Lucas said at the Fortune Workplace Innovation Summit earlier this month.
Lucas has also raised concerns about how companies have been using EEO-1 data. She said a number of employers have been misusing the information in ways that have hurt white people and men, including publishing demographic data after the 2020 murder of George Floyd as part of public diversity commitments and then making hiring decisions based on protected characteristics.
"All it has to do is motivate — in whole or in part — your decision making, and you're into unlawful territory," Lucas said. She believes only a company's lawyers and human resources staff should know employee gender and race information.
According to court documents, the EEOC has accused Nike and The New York Times of discrimination against white employees and job applicants.
What the Numbers Show
The EEO-1 data collection began in 1966 under the newly established EEOC. Since the 1960s, the agency has recovered billions of dollars for workers who suffered employment discrimination, with EEO-1 data playing a key role in many cases.
In one notable example, the EEOC used demographic data to build a case against Bass Pro Shops, alleging the company discriminated against Black and Hispanic job applicants nationwide. The pattern emerged when investigators compared Bass Pro's workforce demographics to other retailers in the same counties and to the available pool of workers in surrounding areas. In 2017, the company settled for $10.5 million without admitting wrongdoing.
The 1979 regulation the EEOC seeks to rescind was issued alongside a landmark Supreme Court decision known as Weber, where the court found that affirmative action plans to remedy past discrimination were lawful provided they did not "unnecessarily trammel the interests of white employees" and were temporary. A 1987 decision known as Johnson extended those protections to efforts aimed at helping women.
The Bottom Line
The proposals await White House review before taking effect. Legal experts note that even if the EEOC rescinds its 1979 guidelines, the Weber-Johnson standard from Supreme Court precedent remains binding law — for now. Feldblum said she believes "the Supreme Court is just waiting for a case that might allow them to overturn those two important cases."
The more immediate impact would likely be on enforcement efficiency. Without mandatory EEO-1 data collection, the agency would need to subpoena demographic information from companies, making investigations far more laborious and time-consuming.
David Cohen, president of DCI Consulting, said employers should continue tracking their own workforce demographics as a smart business practice regardless of government requirements. "It's like you're driving a car without a dashboard," he said. "You have no idea what's going on." He advised clients that while EEOC priorities have shifted, federal civil rights laws remain unchanged.