Feds Move to Scrap 60-Year Workplace Race Data

The federal government has been counting who works where, and in what job, by race and sex, since 1966. Every year, companies with 100 or more employees fill out a form — the EEO-1 — and send it to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Ten job categories, from executives down to laborers and service workers, broken out by sex and by race or ethnicity. It is dull paperwork. It is also the single largest window anyone has into who actually gets hired and who actually gets promoted at big American employers.

On July 21st, the EEOC voted 2-1 to start closing that window.

The Commission approved a notice of proposed rulemaking that would rescind not just the EEO-1 but the whole family of EEO data reports — the forms filed by local governments, school districts, unions, and apprenticeship programs too. Public comments are due 30 days after publication in the Federal Register, and the agency has scheduled a public hearing for August 11th. Requests to testify were due by August 7th.

Here is what that means in Rhode Island. Every Rhode Island company with at least 100 workers — hospital systems, manufacturers, big retailers, insurers — currently files one of these reports. Nationally the collection covers roughly 73,000 employers and more than 50 million workers. And unlike Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Illinois, California, Colorado, Maryland, Nevada, and Washington, Rhode Island has no state law requiring anything comparable. There is no backstop here. If the federal requirement goes, the data goes.

The EEOC's argument is a burden argument wrapped in a constitutional one. By the agency's own estimate, the reports cost employers almost $275 million a year and cost the EEOC nearly $4 million to administer. The proposal states the reports are inconsistent with equal employment opportunity law, may raise constitutional concerns, and collect data that is not narrowly tailored or necessary to enforce the anti-discrimination statutes. Chair Andrea Lucas, appointed by President Trump, put it plainly in her statement: "The EEO data reports stand in direct tension with [federal law's] requirement that employment practices be colorblind."

You might think this changes what's legal. It doesn't. Title VII still bars discrimination. Section 709(c) still requires employers to keep records relevant to a discrimination investigation, and the EEOC can still demand them. What changes is who can see a pattern before somebody files a charge.

That distinction matters more here than in most states. Rhode Island has no EEOC office — complaints from Rhode Island workers are handled out of the Boston area office, which operates under a longstanding worksharing agreement with the Rhode Island Commission for Human Rights. Both agencies have used aggregate EEO-1 data to spot disparities by industry and region and decide where to look. Strip it out, and investigators are working case by case, subpoena by subpoena. Which is why some analysts have questioned whether rescission saves money at all — it may just move the cost from a form to a fight.

The opposition arrived fast. Equal Pay Today, a coalition of more than 50 national and state pay-equity organizations, denounced the proposal the day of the vote, saying the collection plays a critical role in enforcing federal anti-discrimination law. The National Women's Law Center called it the Commission's "latest attack on civil rights" and warned it would let the agency justify enforcement priorities "driven by politics rather than facts." The shareholder advocacy group As You Sow, which uses EEO-1 filings obtained through public records requests to assess corporate risk, found that companies declining to disclose voluntarily tend to have measurably less diverse management.

The dissent came from inside the building. Commissioner Kalpana Kotagal, the lone Democrat left on the Commission, said the body was weighing "whether to turn back time to a period before the civil rights movement, kneecapping its ability to protect workers."

None of this happened out of nowhere. Elimination of the EEO-1 was recommended in Project 2025's policy blueprint. The Commission dropped the non-binary reporting option in 2025. It never opened the 2026 collection cycle, which prompted ten Democratic lawmakers, led by Senator Lisa Blunt Rochester and Representative Jerrold Nadler, to write Lucas in May demanding transparency about the agency's plans. The proposal went to the Office of Management and Budget on May 14th and cleared review on June 9th.

Colorado saw it coming. Governor Jared Polis signed a law in June requiring employers there to file EEO-1-style data with the Secretary of State beginning July 1, 2027 — federal requirement or not. Massachusetts is in a more awkward spot, since its own law defines a covered employer as one subject to the federal filing requirement. No comparable proposal is on the table in Rhode Island.

A rule this old can't be erased by press release. The Administrative Procedure Act and the Paperwork Reduction Act both apply, comments have to be read, and a final rule is expected in the fall. Until then, the record is open — and the number that matters is thirty days.