The Trump Administration Moves to Stop Collecting Workplace Demographic Data

The Trump administration has moved to stop requiring companies to report demographic data, undoing a 60-year-old precedent that Democrats and civil rights experts say could make it harder to enforce antidiscrimination laws.

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Republicans on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which is charged with enforcing civil rights laws against workplace discrimination, voted on Tuesday to end the agency’s decades-long practice of collecting race, sex and ethnicity workforce data.

The commission’s Republicans argue that these reporting requirements may actually lead to discrimination because they “may encourage employers to discriminate against employees who are not considered ‘minorities,’” the reads.

The agency’s lone Democratic commissioner, Kalpana Kotagal, said that ending the collection of race and sex data would “kneecap the agency’s ability to investigate discrimination and protect workers.”

“These efforts should be seen for what they are: an attempt to weaken equal employment opportunity, and to undermine progress for women and historically marginalized communities,” Kotagal said in a statement.

The move to halt data collection is the latest change in an ongoing transformation of the workplace civil rights agency, which Congress created under the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The bipartisan commission is typically composed of five presidentially-appointed members who serve five-year terms. No more than three members can be from the same party.

But early in his administration, President Donald Trump made the unprecedented move of firing two of the panel’s three Democratic commissioners, leaving only Kotagal and Republican Andrea Lucas, currently the EEOC’s chair, on the commission. Another Republican commissioner, Brittany Bull Panuccio, has since been appointed and confirmed by the Senate, giving the Republicans the majority at the EEOC, which is at its lowest staffing levels in over 45 years after about a quarter of its workforce since Trump took office.

Under Lucas, the EEOC has prioritized “remedying DEI-related race and sex discrimination.” Late last year, she posted a viral video on X asking, “Are you a white male who has experienced discrimination at work based on your race or sex?” and telling viewers that they may be able to file a claim.

In addition to claiming that the demographics data collection may promote discrimination, the EEOC is also arguing that there are also constitutional concerns that the reporting requirements may violate equal protection guarantees and that ending the reporting requirements will result in cost savings.

Kotagal, in her statement, said that the constitutional claim is “untethered from reality” and that the EEOC may now have to resort to subpoenas and requests for information to get the data from employers, processes that could wind up in expensive court battles.

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Democrats have also questioned the administration’s reverse-discrimination concerns. Chai Feldblum, who was a Democratic EEOC commissioner for over eight years beginning in 2010, told NOTUS that it is an “absolutely false assumption” that employers that discover a discrepancy such as a lack of Black people in management will “necessarily violate the law” by deciding, “My next three hires will be Black people.”

“That is illegal,” said Feldblum. But “there are many legal ways to remedy a disparity.”

The data collected by the EEOC is instrumental to the agency’s enforcement capacity, said Kotagal, pointing to a $5.5 million settlement with trucking company Central Transport over allegations that the company intentionally refused to hire qualified female truck drivers as an example.

Analyzing the company’s data showed statistically significant disparities in the hiring of male drivers, which helped the EEOC find cause that there had been discrimination, Kotagal said.

Demographic data helps the EEOC put discrimination allegations into context and guide investigations, said Karla Gilbride, who previously served as EEOC general counsel after being appointed by former President Joe Biden.

“Losing this data will take an important tool out of the EEOC’s law enforcement toolbox and slow down the investigative process, as the EEOC will have to request the same type of information from employers after a charge is received instead of already having it at the investigation’s outset,” Gilbride told NOTUS in a statement.

The decision to halt reporting requirements, if finalized, would also affect what information employers can access to see how their workforce compares to industry norms. Currently, the EEOC publishes aggregate level summaries of the data it’s moving to ax.

Even with the EEOC changing its priorities, employers could still be subject to legal challenges if they have discrimination problems, said Feldblum, noting that “the law does not change because chair Lucas wants it to change.”

The EEOC is one of many parts of the government that is moving to dismantle demographic data collection. LGBTQ+ data has especially been targeted, and data scientists fear that race and ethnicity data is becoming another target for the Trump administration, as NOTUS has previously reported.

The EEOC is collecting public comments on the proposed rule to roll back reporting requirements for 30 days and is holding a public hearing on the plan on Aug. 11.

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