Overview
- The commission’s Republican majority voted 2–1 on Tuesday, July 21, 2026, to advance a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would rescind the EEO-1 and related reporting obligations and start a 30-day public comment period.
- The NPRM schedules a public hearing for August 11, 2026, and does not change current filing duties until a final rule is issued, though the EEOC says it will still request employer records during specific investigations.
- EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas argued the routine collection is costly and may raise constitutional and Title VII concerns, and the agency estimates the change would save employers roughly $275 million a year and reduce EEOC costs by about $4 million.
- Democrats, former EEOC officials and civil-rights groups warn losing annual EEO-1 data would make it harder to detect patterns of discrimination, slow investigations, and reduce public and corporate accountability, with likely legal and political challenges ahead.
- The EEO-1 system has gathered job-category, race, ethnicity and sex data from tens of thousands of employers since 1966 to track trends such as underrepresentation of women and racial minorities in senior roles, a dataset researchers and policymakers rely on.