Andrea Lucas is the chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Kalpana Kotagal is the only Democrat remaining on the commission. Kotagal voted against the proposal to rescind the data collection requirement.

Lucas stated that the reporting requirement is in direct tension with Title VII’s requirement that employment practices be colorblind. She stated that the reporting requirement risks hindering effective enforcement and raises constitutional concerns. Lucas also stated that the requirement may promote racial stereotyping at work and encourage employers to engage in discrimination.

Lucas estimated that compiling the reports costs employers $275 million annually. She stated that administering the EEO-1 program costs the commission about $4 million each year.

The requirement, known as the EEO-1 report, has been in place since 1966. The EEO-1 report requires companies with at least 100 employees, or federal contractors with at least 50 employees, to submit annual demographic data. The proposed rule would also eliminate similar reporting requirements for unions, state and local governments, and public schools.

The EEO-1 reports cover approximately 50 million workers and 73,000 employers. The EEO-1 form asks employers to report the number of male and female workers in 10 job categories, as well as the number of workers from different races and ethnicities.

A public hearing on the proposal is scheduled for August 11. Requests to testify at the public hearing are due by August 7.

Sharon Block is the executive director at the centre for Labour and a Just Economy at Harvard Law School. "EEO reports just provide the government with a snapshot of the makeup of the workforce. These reports don’t compel employers to hire or not hire anyone. It is data — no employer or federal government should be afraid of sharing data." Block said.

Kalpana Kotagal was appointed to the commission by former President Joe Biden in 2022. "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.

The commission investigates employers accused of discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, or disability. The commission investigates roughly 88,000 complaints each year.

The commission processed over 88,000 discrimination charges in fiscal year 2025. The agency secured $660 million for over 17,000 victims of workplace discrimination in fiscal year 2025. The commission has recovered over $11 billion for victims of workplace discrimination since the establishment of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The proposal to end the data collection requirement was recommended by Project 2025, a policy blueprint from the Heritage Foundation. The commission submitted a draft proposal to the Office of Management and Budget to rescind the EEO-1 requirement in May 2026. The commission did not announce the opening of the 2026 demographic data collection cycle in May 2026.

The commission last collected EEO-1 data for the year 2024 but has not publicly disclosed it. Collection of EEO-1 data for the year 2025 would have begun in 2026.

Ten Democrats, led by Senator Lisa Blunt Rochester and Representative Jerrold Nadler, wrote a letter to Andrea Lucas urging the commission to proceed with the annual collection of demographic data. In 2023, women held 34.5 percent of executive-level roles, an increase from 29.2 percent in 2013. White men make up roughly one-third of the US workforce but account for 52.7 percent of executive-level positions.

White and Asian women were no longer underrepresented in senior roles compared to their numbers in the overall workforce by 2023. Asian men have been proportionally represented in senior roles for years. Black and Hispanic women remained sharply underrepresented in executive and senior manager roles in 2023. Women account for 59.6 percent of employees in the finance and insurance industries but hold only 33.1 percent of executive-level roles. A 2022 report showed that between 2014 and 2022 women made up less than 23 percent of workers in the technology sector. The Institute for Women’s Policy Research reports that Black women make 64 cents for every dollar paid to white men. Last year, 24 companies in the S&P 100 voluntarily disclosed their workforce demographic data.