Breaking News: District Court Orders EEO-1 Component 2 Data Collection Closed

Seyfarth Synopsis: On February 10, 2020, Judge Chutkan granted the Office of Management and Budget’s (“OMB”) motion to close the EEO-1 Component 2 data collection tool.

Yesterday the District Court officially ordered the EEO-1 Component 2 data collection closed. 

As we previously reported, the Court had ordered the EEOC to continue collecting Component 2 pay and hours data from 2017 and 2018 until the percentage of filers equaled or exceeded the average percentage of filers for the last four EEO-1 reporting cycles.  The Plaintiffs and EEOC were previously in disagreement as to how the completion percentage should be determined.

The disagreement has been resolved as the Court’s order recognized that the parties now agree that the 88.8% of 2017 filers and 89.6% of 2018 filers represents a large enough proportion of eligible filers to satisfy the government’s data collection obligations.  The Court declined to grant the Plaintiffs' request for an order that the EEOC provide sixty days’ notice before disposing of Component 2 data.  The Court’s ruling on this issue was based on the EEOC’s representation that all decisions regarding data retention would be made pursuant to governing requirements under federal law.

The EEOC has already stated its intention to discontinue the collection of Component 2 pay data in its September 12, 2019 Federal Register publication, but has not closed the door completely on future pay collections.  We will continue to monitor and report on any efforts by the EEOC to collect pay data in the future.  In the meantime, the EEOC has announced its intention to continue collecting Component 1 data which captures employee counts by race and gender.  In a recent update on its website, the EEOC stated that it was in the process of seeking approval for the EEO-1 survey data (i.e., Component 1) and has not yet provided information related to the date the collection period would open.