Trump Admin Tries To End 60-Year-Old Rule That Stops Workplace Discrimination

The Trump administration has proposed ending a long-standing federal civil rights requirement, which legal experts say will make it harder for employees to raise concerns about discrimination and may help make the American workplace whiter.

Most companies are required to report their employee demographic data to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency that enforces anti-discrimination law in every single workplace across the country, thanks to a rule created in 1966. Collecting and sharing this data ensures that companies are complying with civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination based on protected characteristics like race or gender.

The EEOC proposed last week to end the rule mandating such data collection, known as EEO-1.

“The decision to no longer collect this data, I think, is part of a larger pattern of the federal government stepping back from its historic role of protecting workers and ensuring equal opportunity in the workplace,” said Amalea Smirniotopoulos, senior policy counsel at the Legal Defense Fund, a legal organization that advocates for equality.

The rule promotes transparency, allows companies to analyze their own employment practices and helps the EEOC enforce the law. The data can also help individuals bolster their own discrimination claims.

For example, Bass Pro Shops, an outdoor-focused chain store, was forced to pay $10.5 million after the EEOC found that the store had a pattern of discriminating against Black and Latino men in its hiring and recruiting practices. In their initial complaint, the employees used the data to bolster their claims.

But now the federal government is arguing that collecting and publishing the data is a form of racial discrimination.

“The Trump administration is trying to argue that just by collecting the data, you’re requiring people to make decisions about who to hire or promote based on race or gender,” Smirniotopoulos said. “And frankly that’s just not true.”

Federal law already bars companies from making hiring and promotion decisions based on race or gender.

Jenny Yang, who was EEOC chair during the Obama administration and served on the commission until 2018, said that Andrea Lucas, the current chair, may be trying to scare employers from sharing the data by falsely suggesting that doing so could actually run afoul of civil rights law.

“She has suggested that sharing the data with managers could somehow be evidence of discrimination. That is not supported by the law,” Yang said. “She suggested that publishing aggregate data on your company website could also be evidence that you’re taking race or gender into account when making hiring decisions. But that’s also not supported by the law.”

The Supreme Court ruled in 1971 that employers could not impose unnecessary requirements for a job in order to keep Black people from being promoted. “And that’s sort of the core tenet of our anti-discrimination laws,” Yang said. “That you can’t build in unnecessary headwinds that exclude people for reasons that aren’t job-related. And this administration is trying to push back against that notion.”

The case was an example of disparate impact, the legal term for a policy that disproportionately harms one group, regardless of the intent.

“We’re seeing this effort to intimidate employers from doing the work or preventing unjustified disparate impact,” Yang said. “And that is really harmful to all workers.”

The proposed rescission comes at a time when the Trump administration is openly decrying diversity efforts and promoting the idea that the real victims of discrimination in the workplace are white men. Lucas, the chairman of the EEOC, made a video last December, urging more white men to file discrimination claims. Some have heeded their call. The agency recently opened up an investigation into The New York Times after a white male editor claimed he was passed over for a promotion because he’s white.

Decades of EEOC data shows there is not a disproportionate amount of discrimination against white men.

“The data shows Black people, other people of color, women, people with disabilities and LGBTQ+ people are the ones who are qualified for jobs and promotions,” Smirniotopoulos said, “but are being excluded from those opportunities.”

The rule can’t be officially rescinded until the administration goes through a formal process that includes issuing a notice and a public comment period.

In a contradictory move, the Trump administration is suing colleges and universities in order to obtain very detailed demographic data about students and faculty. The Department of Justice has filed suit against Yale University’s medical school, alleging that the Ivy League program had violated anti-discrimination laws by favoring Black and Hispanic applicants over white and Asian students.

Companies can use the data to compare their hiring and promoting practices to similar organizations in their industry which in turn can help leadership identify any areas where they may be falling short. Despite the Trump administration’s efforts, experts say large companies will still probably continue to collect demographic data so they don’t run afoul of discrimination laws — but that it may not provide a complete picture.

“It can make it more difficult for industry leaders to make changes, if they do want to increase representation in any number of these demographics,” said Whittney Barth, an employment law professor at Emory University.

Yang believes that the EEOC would prefer it if private companies weren’t doing that at all. “I think they want to discourage employers from using the data proactively to prevent discrimination,” she said.

It could work. “Some employers may become intimidated or think, ‘Maybe it’s lower cost not to do it, so let’s just stop,’” Yang said. “Or, ‘Hey, if we don’t have the data, then we can just put our head in the sand.’”

The EEOC under Trump has made it clear they want to change the priorities of the agency — and rescinding this rule will certainly help them further that goal.

“If employers stop collecting the data, then they can’t produce it if EEOC is doing an investigation,” Yang said. “And then it becomes much more resource-intensive for the agency to recreate the data.”

Enforcing the laws that help fight discrimination in the workplace could get more difficult.