EEOC’s Pay Data Collection Reinstated by Federal Judge

A stalled Obama-era requirement for employers to report their pay data to a federal civil rights agency has been revived by a federal judge.

The White House’s Office of Management and Budget didn’t provide a “reasoned explanation” for placing a hold on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s pay data collection, Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled March 4.

Chutkan ordered the collection to go back into effect, meaning most private employers with 100 or more employees will have to submit information on their workers’ wages and hours—broken down by race, sex, and ethnicity—to the EEOC.

The National Women’s Law Center and the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement sued the commission and the OMB in November 2017 after a revised version of the EEO-1 Report was blocked from going into effect. In her ruling, the judge said the OMB’s stay on the pay data portions of the report was “arbitrary and capricious.”

Employers already report workforce data by race, sex, and ethnicity across 10 job categories in their annual EEO-1 submissions to the EEOC.

The expanded pay data collection was initially approved by OMB in September 2016. But the Trump administration reversed course in August 2017 after businesses said the requirements would be too burdensome.

This is a developing story.

The case is Nat’l Women’s Law Ctr. v. OMB, 2019 BL 72131, D.D.C., No. 17-2458, plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment granted 3/4/19