NELA, The Institute, and over twenty other worker and gender justice organizations signed on to an amicus brief filed on October 25, 2019, by the ACLU Women’s Rights Project with the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in the case of National Women’s Law Center v. Office of Management and Budget (No. 1:17-cv-02458-TSC). Oral argument in the case is set for Friday, January 24. The EEO-1 Report is a compliance survey mandated by federal statute and regulation that requires large private employers and federal contractors above a certain number of employees to submit employment pay data to the EEOC every three years. Covered employers report on the race, gender, ethnicity, and job categories represented in their workforce.
In 2016 under the Obama administration, the EEO-1 was amended to require that covered employers also would have to provide compensation data on those same groups. The amended rule was finalized after two rounds of public comment. NELA, and many others submitted comments in support of the proposed changes to the rule and the amended rule requiring the added data became final and was scheduled to take effect in March 2018. The purpose of the amendment was to more effectively identify wage and other disparities in employment.
In 2017, the amendment to the rule was stayed by the Trump administration Office of Management and Budget (OMB) stayed the rule with the issuance of a very brief memo claiming the amendment was “unnecessarily burdensome” to employers and federal contractors responsible for completing the EEO-1. The National Women’s Law Center sued the OMB to lift the stay and enforce the amended EEO-1 rule. In March 2019, the DC District Court ruled that the OMB had provided insufficient justification for the stay and rescinded the stay. OMB appealed the District Court ruling. If they prevail, the 2019 EEO-1 reports will have been the first and only time the new data was required to be reported.