Hunton Employment & Labor Perspectives

This past week, the EEOC filed suit against 15 different employers located across 11 different states. There was one common theme in each action: an employer’s failure to complete EEO-1 Component 1 reports for both 2021 and 2022. By filing these lawsuits, the EEOC is requesting courts to order these employers to fulfill their requirement of providing their company’s workforce demographic data. These suits were filed just ahead of the deadline for employers to file their EEO-1 Component 1 report reflecting data from the 2023 calendar year, which is quickly approaching on June 4, 2024.

Certain employers are mandated to annually report their company’s workforce demographic data to the EEOC. Under Section 709 of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended, and the regulations found in Sections 1602.7 through 1602.14 of Chapter XIV of Title 29 of the Code of Federal Regulations, private employers with more than 100 employees, and federal contractors with 50 or more employees, are obligated to participate in this annual reporting. In these annual EEO-1 Component 1 reports, employers are required to submit workforce demographic data regarding job categories, sex, and race or ethnicity.  The EEOC began collecting this annual data in 1966, and the collected data is used for research, investigative, and publication purposes.

If an employer fails to file their EEO-1 Component report by the reporting deadline, the EEOC will attempt to notify the employer that they have not fulfilled their reporting obligation. First, the EEOC will send employers a “Notice of Failure to File” and request they file their missing report as soon as possible, but no later than an extended “Failure to File” deadline. If the employer fails to submit their report by this extended deadline, the employer will be deemed out of compliance. After this point, the EEOC has the ability to seek additional remedies.

Recently, the EEOC turned to the courts for help with retrieving data that is missing due to employers’ failure to file accurate, complete reports. The EEOC is expressly authorized under Section 1602.9 of Chapter XIV of Title 29 of the Code of Federal Regulations to seek a remedy through a U.S. District Court when an employer is “failing or refusing to file Report EEO-1 when required to do so.” The EEOC has requested the courts to compel the employers to file their missing reports. In each of the 15 actions recently filed, the EEOC alleged that the employer had failed to complete their required reports for both 2021 and 2022. Additionally, the EEOC alleged they had issued, or attempted to issue, notices of noncompliance and failure to file to each employer prior to filing suit.

The deadline for employers to file their EEO-1 Component 1 report reflecting data from the 2023 calendar year is on June 4, 2024. In order to avoid being the target of future actions, employers should plan to comply with the EEOC’s deadline. For additional resources, including the EEOC’s instruction booklet designed to assist employers with filing their EEO-1 Component 1 reports, visit: www.eeocdata.org/eeo1.

Employers that need assistance with their EEO-1s can reach out to our team and outside counsel for assistance. Employers that will not meet the deadline should work with outside counsel to strategize on how to best mitigate risk.