Dive Brief:
- The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s 2024 EEO-1 Component 1 data collection portal will open May 20 and close June 24, according to an agency filing with the Office of Budget and Management.
- The agency has removed the option for employers to voluntarily report nonbinary employees via comment box, a feature that was added in EEOC’s 2023 instruction booklet, an April 15 document submitted to OBM says.
- The collection period has been shortened to five weeks and despite President Donald Trump’s recession of executive order 11246, which barred discrimination by federal contractors, the proposed 2024 booklet still requires federal contractors with 50 or more workers to file EEO-1 reports, law firm Ogletree Deakins observed.
Dive Insight:
EEOC’s removal of the option to include nonbinary workers in EEO-1 Component 1 reporting aligns with the agency’s approach on gender issues following the Trump administration coming into power in January; shortly after Andrea Lucas was selected as acting chair for the agency, she announced her intention to roll back the “Biden administration’s gender identity agenda” to comply with the president’s sweeping executive order on gender and sex.
Other actions the agency has taken include removing the “X” gender marker from discrimination charge forms; removing the agency’s “pronoun app,” which allowed workers to identify pronouns internally and externally; and removing webpages, statements, forms, trainings and more that it identified as “promoting gender ideology.” Lucas also expressed her desire to remove certain other documents — such as the 2024 enforcement guidance on harassment in the workplace — but noted she needed a quorum in order to do so.
EEOC has also stepped away from protecting LGBTQ+ workers’ rights more broadly. In late January, the agency directed its employees to stop processing claims alleging sexual orientation- and gender identity-based discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, signaling an abandonment of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2020 Bostock v. Clayton County, Ga. decision.
Prior to EEOC introducing the option to report nonbinary workers in comment box in the forms in 2023, HR professionals noted the binary gender options put them in a difficult position.
