Two employee advocacy groups have sued the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in federal district court in Washington, D.C., alleging that the agency did not have the authority to reconsider and then withdraw its prior approval of the expanded EEO-1 form issued in 2016 by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
The EEOC revised the EEO-1 in 2016 to require employers to collect and report extensive summary compensation and hours worked data. Had the expanded form gone into effect, covered employers would have been required to begin reporting the additional information beginning with the 2017 reporting cycle, with a new reporting date of March 31, 2018. Although the expanded EEO-1 was initially approved by the Obama Administration OMB, this past August the Trump Administration OMB notified the EEOC that it was withdrawing its prior approval of the revised form, thus in effect restoring the old EEO-1.
The lawsuit filed last week by the National Women’s Law Center and the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, National Women’s Law Center v. Office of Management and Budget, Case No. 1:17-cv-02458 (D.D.C. Nov. 2017), in essence claims that OMB did not have the authority under federal administrative law to reconsider its prior approval of the expanded EEO-1.
Please note that it could be months before this litigation reaches any kind of merits determination. And even if a court ultimately should rule in the plaintiffs’ favor, a reconstituted EEOC with a Trump-appointed majority will have something to say about what employers are going to be required to report on the EEO-1. In the meantime, employers should continue to prepare to file the “old” EEO-1 Report using 2017 data by the new March 31, 2018, filing deadline.
A copy of the plaintiffs’ complaint is available here.
Members of the Center for Workplace Compliance (CWC) can read more here.