Comment from Baltazar, Jodie EEOC-2026-0034

I am writing both as a graduate student and an interested member of the public to oppose the proposed rescission of the EEO reporting requirements. The Commission’s central justification that collecting aggregate race and sex data by job category encourages or enables unlawful discriminatory decision-making conflates data collection with how data is used. The EEO-1 reports collect anonymized, establishment-level statistics; they do not require or authorize any employer to make decisions based on that data. If an employer misuses aggregate demographic data to make decisions based on race or sex, that conduct is already illegal. Eliminating data collection does not eliminate the risk of discrimination; rather it eliminates the EEOC’s and the public’s ability to detect, on a large demographic scale over time, where patterns exist in the first place. I am also profoundly concerned about the loss of this data as a historical and research resource and what it may mean for the future of other demographic data collection, like the census, in the United States. The EEO-1 series is one of the only longitudinal datasets tracking U.S. workforce composition by race, sex, and occupational category, dating back to 1966. Economists, sociologists, and labor researchers have relied on this data for decades to study long-term trends in workplace composition and its usefulness extends well beyond EEOC enforcement. The data can’t be reconstructed retroactively once collection stops and would create a permanent gap in the historical record of how the American workforce has changed over time. Finally, the Commission's rescission fails to grapple with reasonably foreseeable consequences of its own action. Rescinding the federal requirement will not end demographic reporting; it will fragment it. Colorado has already enacted a law requiring employers to continue filing EEO-1-style data with the state even if the federal requirement disappears, and it is reasonable to expect more states to follow as they seek to preserve this data. If each designs its own reporting parameters, it will be difficult to aggregate that data into any coherent national picture of employment or workforce trends. I urge the Commission to withdraw this proposal. If changes need to be made, they should address genuine weaknesses, like outdated job classifications and confidentiality restrictions, and evaluate them independently of the insupportable claim that data collection itself causes discrimination. Furthermore, because EEO-1 filings are confidential and rarely accessible to independent researchers, there is no actual evidence establishing a connection between data collection and the discriminatory incentives the Commission attributes to it. By reevaluating the confidentiality restrictions that limit research access, the Commission could ensure that claims like this one are evaluated against evidence rather than simply assumed.