This month, a federal judge in Washington, D.C. lifted a stay enjoining the requirement that employers complete the pay data collection component in the annual Employer Information Report EEO-1, otherwise known as the EEO-1 Report. Certain employers are required to file an EEO-1 Report each year with the EEOC Office of Enterprise Data and Analytics’ Employer Data Team. Click here for EEOC guidance on whether your business is subject to the EEO-1 reporting requirement. 

The pay data collection component requires employers to provide W-2 wage information and total hours worked for all employees by race, ethnicity, and sex within 12 pay bands. In 2016, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission under President Obama’s administration adopted the new requirement of collecting pay data in the EEO-1 Report to assist with enforcement of federal equal pay laws and encourage employers to review their compensation practices to ensure equal pay. In 2017, President Trump’s White House Office of Management and Budget stayed the pay data collection component of the EE0-1 Report. On March 4, 2019, a federal judge in D.C. lifted the stay and ordered the immediate reinstatement of the pay data collection provisions, rejecting the notion that employers may not be prepared to provide the additional pay data information, in part, because the pay data collection provision was in effect for approximately a year before its suspension.

Current EEO-1 Reports are due by Friday, May 31, 2019. Although an appeal of the order lifting the stay enjoining the pay data collection component in the EEO-1 Report is likely, it remains unclear whether such an appeal would result in additional delay of the requirement that employers complete the pay data collection component. Accordingly, employers should begin collecting pay data of their workforces and plan to timely complete that component of their EEO-1 Reports in the event a new stay is not entered.