Still No Word on When EEO-1 Component 2 Data Must Be Submitted

Employers are still on hold as they wait to find out when they must submit pay and hours-worked data as part of their annual EEO-1 reports.

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An April 16 hearing before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ended with Judge Tanya S. Chutkan instructing the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the other parties involved in a lawsuit over the new EEO-1 requirements to submit summaries of their positions by April 22.

Chutkan will decide sometime after receiving the summaries if the newly required information—called Component 2 data—will be due on May 31 (the current EEO-1 deadline), September 30 (the date the EEOC has requested), or some other date.

Regardless of when the Component 2 deadline is set, the deadline remains May 31 for the information known as Component 1 data–the race/ethnicity, gender, and job category information that has always been required in EEO-1 reports.

The EEO-1 report is required of employers with at least 100 employees as well as federal contractors and subcontractors with at least 50 employees. Information from the reports helps the EEOC gauge compliance with federal equal opportunity laws.

In previous years, employers had to submit just the Component 1 data, but the Obama administration added the new Component 2 requirement to help the EEOC and the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) identify pay disparities across industries and occupations.

Before the Component 2 requirement went into effect, the Trump administration issued a stay, claiming the new requirements were too burdensome on employers. Then on March 4, Chutkan ordered the stay lifted, meaning the EEO-1 reports due May 31 would be the first to require the new Component 2 data.

The EEOC responded that it isn’t prepared to accept Component 2 data and asked for a September 30 deadline for Component 2 submissions.

EEOC Chief Data Officer Pushes for Deadline Extension

Juliette Duval, an attorney working with Fortney & Scott, LLC in Washington, D.C., attended the April 16 hearing and heard Chris Haffer, the EEOC’s chief data officer, explain that a May 31 deadline would be nearly impossible for his agency. He said the EEOC will have to have a contractor do the work, and the scope of what the contractor must do has yet to be completed so the agency can’t move forward until the contract is approved.

Duval reports that Haffer said the EEOC’s contractor can begin collecting data between July 15 and September 30, but that timeline doesn’t consider the burden on employers to collect the data to submit. Employers might need even more time.

Tammy Binford writes and edits news alerts and newsletter articles on labor and employment law topics for BLR web and print publications.