Defending Education filed comments with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) this week to support a proposed rule that would end requirements forcing large employers to sort their employees by race, ethnicity, and sex and report it to the federal government every year. These EEOC rules apply automatically to any employer with more than 100 workers; they have no way to opt out. Under existing rules, employers must classify every employee even when that employee refuses to self-identify by race.
DE argues that mandatory race-counting doesn’t stop discrimination. Instead, it encourages it. When the government makes companies track employees by race year after year, companies start making hiring, retention, and promotion decisions around demographic targets instead of individual merit. Removing this reporting rule does not stop the EEOC from investigating real discrimination. It just stops the default collection of racial data on every large employer in the country. We urge the Commission to finalize the rule.
