The Federal Government Wants to Stop Collecting Your Employer’s Race Data. Here’s What a Proposed Rule Would Actually Change.
At a public meeting on July 21, 2026, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission voted 2-1 to publish a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would rescind the EEO-1 through EEO-6 reports — the annual race, ethnicity, and sex data-reporting requirements that have applied to large employers, federal contractors, unions, governments, school districts, and colleges since 1966. Chair Andrea Lucas (R) and Commissioner Brittany Panuccio (R) voted yes; Commissioner Kalpana Kotagal (D) cast the lone no vote.
The proposal was published in the Federal Register on July 23, 2026, opening a 30-day public comment period and setting a public hearing for August 11 at EEOC headquarters. None of it is final — a proposed rule still has to survive notice-and-comment rulemaking before it takes effect.
What the rule would actually end is narrower than the headlines suggest: only the requirement that employers file aggregate demographic data with the federal government. It would not touch an employee’s ability to voluntarily tell their own employer their race — that was already voluntary — and it would not stop any company from keeping the same records for itself.
- 2-1 — party-line vote to propose rescinding all six EEO reports — Lucas (R) and Panuccio (R) yes, Kotagal (D) the lone no
- $275 million — EEOC's own estimate of the annual compliance cost the reports impose across the roughly 2 million entities all six report types cover combined
- 73,000 — private employers with 100+ workers that file the best-known of the six, the EEO-1 report, on its own
- 2 of 5 — EEOC commissioner seats currently vacant — leaving only three sitting commissioners, the bare quorum needed to vote at all
The six reports cover different corners of the American workforce. EEO-1 collects race, ethnicity, and sex data from private employers with 100 or more employees and from some federal contractors with 50 or more. EEO-3 covers labor unions, EEO-4 covers state and local governments, EEO-5 covers public school districts, and EEO-6 covers colleges and universities. Together, they have functioned since 1966 as the federal government’s primary tool for tracking, at national scale, who American employers actually hire, promote, and pay.
The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking published in the Federal Register on July 23, 2026 as document 2026-14937, amending regulations at 29 CFR Part 1602, is the formal start of the process to eliminate all six. The public comment period runs 30 days from publication, and the EEOC has scheduled a public hearing at its Washington headquarters for August 11, 2026; anyone who wants to testify has to submit a written request by August 7. A proposed rule is only a first step under the Administrative Procedure Act — the Commission still has to review and respond to public comments and adopt a final rule before the reporting requirement actually disappears. For now, employers still have to file.
Chair Andrea Lucas (R) framed the proposal as a constitutional problem, not just a paperwork one. “The EEO Data Reports stand in direct tension with Title VII’s requirement that employment practices be colorblind,” she said in announcing the vote. In her fuller written statement, she argued the reports “are not mandated by Title VII, raise potential constitutional concerns, and collect race and sex data that neither is narrowly tailored nor necessary for enforcing federal antidiscrimination laws.”
“The EEO Data Reports stand in direct tension with Title VII's requirement that employment practices be colorblind.”
Andrea Lucas · Chair, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
Today, at a public meeting, the EEOC voted to publish a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to rescind the annual requirement for employers and other regulated entities to file the EEO-1 through EEO-6 reports with the EEOC... After a comprehensive legal review, the Commission preliminarily has determined that these reporting requirements impose significant costs while offering limited enforcement value.
Lucas separately linked to her fuller written Commission statement laying out the legal reasoning behind the vote in more detail.
Read my full statement on today's vote to propose rescinding the EEO-1 through EEO-6 demographic data reports, including the legal analysis behind the Commission's preliminary determination.
Commissioner Kalpana Kotagal (D), the Commission’s only Democratic appointee and a Biden nominee, cast the sole no vote. Her office called the reasoning behind the proposal “untethered from reality” and said the move risks “kneecap[ping] the agency’s ability to investigate discrimination and protect workers.” Separately, her office framed the rollback as risking a return to “a period before the civil rights movement.”
The vote also lands at an unusual moment for the Commission itself. The EEOC has five seats by statute, but two are currently vacant, leaving only three sitting commissioners — Lucas, Panuccio, and Kotagal — the bare quorum needed for the agency to vote on anything at all. That means Thursday’s 2-1 outcome used every commissioner currently in the building; there was no room for even one additional dissent without leaving the Commission unable to act.
Today, the Commission held a public meeting on a proposal to rescind EEO-1 through EEO-6 demographic data collection. A transcript from the meeting will be available online.
The proposal is narrower than a full retreat from tracking workplace discrimination. It would not touch an individual employee’s ability to voluntarily self-identify their race, ethnicity, or sex to their own employer — that disclosure was already voluntary at the individual level, and stays that way regardless of what happens to this rule. Nor would it stop any employer from continuing to collect the same demographic data internally, for its own diversity tracking or legal-compliance purposes; the only thing that would go away, once a final rule is adopted, is the requirement to file that aggregate data with the federal government every year.
City Journal’s Robert VerBruggen, whose analysis first flagged this rule for this newsroom, supports the rescission on the same constitutional and “implied DEI pressure” grounds Lucas cites, but he also flags real tradeoffs. The underlying data can still reach the EEOC case by case — he points to the agency’s own recent subpoena of Nike’s diversity-initiative data during a DEI-related investigation as proof the reporting requirement was never the only route to that information. A future Commission with a different partisan makeup could simply restore the rule. Some employers will likely keep voluntarily collecting the same data anyway. And California’s separate state-level pay-data disclosure law is untouched by anything the EEOC does here.
VerBruggen also uses the moment for a media-literacy aside: a widely cited 2023 Bloomberg statistic — that 94% of new jobs at S&P 100 companies that year went to people of color — is one example of how EEO-1-adjacent figures circulate in public debate. He calls that particular number “not particularly rigorous,” a caution worth noting on its own terms, independent of how this rule turns out.
The EEOC estimates the six reports combined cost the roughly 2 million employers, unions, school districts, and governments they cover about $275 million a year in compliance, averaging around $135 per filer — against an administrative cost to the agency itself of about $4 million a year to run the program.
Business groups are not cheering unconditionally. SHRM’s Chief Administrative Officer, Emily M. Dickens, said the organization supports rescinding the current reports “only if” they are replaced by “a more modern, accurate, and useful framework” — a conditional position, not a blanket endorsement of eliminating demographic reporting outright.
Civil-rights and women’s advocacy groups are more directly opposed. Deborah J. Vagins, SVP of Advocacy and Programs at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said: “If you cannot measure problems, you cannot address them, which is exactly why this EEOC is proposing to stop demographic data collections… The EEOC has become a mouthpiece for Trump’s attacks on having a workforce reflective of America.” Katie Sandson, Senior Counsel at the National Women’s Law Center, told Reuters eliminating the data “opens the door for discrimination to be swept under the rug.” And Laurie Henneborn, VP of Research at Catalyst, told Axios workforce data “has helped organizations identify systemic barriers that can stall the advancement of women.”
The Chair — Andrea Lucas (R), who cast one of the two votes for the proposed rescission and argues the reports raise Title VII and constitutional concerns.
The other yes vote — Commissioner Brittany Panuccio (R).
The lone no vote — Commissioner Kalpana Kotagal (D), a Biden appointee and the Commission’s only sitting Democrat, who says the move risks “kneecapping” the agency’s enforcement ability.
Two of the EEOC’s five seats are currently vacant, meaning this vote used every commissioner the agency has.
The EEOC has proposed, not finalized, rescinding the EEO-1 through EEO-6 demographic-data reports that have applied to American employers since 1966, on a 2-1 party-line vote with the Commission’s only Democrat dissenting. If a final rule is eventually adopted, it would end the requirement to file aggregate race and sex data with the federal government — but it would not touch employees’ voluntary self-identification, would not stop employers from keeping their own records, and would not close off the EEOC’s ability to obtain the same data by subpoena in individual investigations. Business groups want a replacement framework, not a void; civil-rights groups want the reports kept entirely. For now, the only thing that has changed is that a public comment period has opened.
