The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has filed its first ever lawsuit against 15 employers in 10 states this week, alleging the companies failed to comply with mandatory EEO-1 federal reporting requirements.  

Each of the employers are ‘repeat’ offenders when it comes to EEOC EEO-1 compliance as the suit alleges ongoing failures to submit mandatory EEO-1 Component 1 data reports in prior years, including for reporting years 2021 and 2022.  

Federal law requires employers with 100 or more employees to submit workforce data to the EEOC. The data collected includes workforce information by job category and sex, race, or ethnicity. This workforce demographic data is used for a variety of purposes including enforcement, analytics and research, and employer self-assessment. Congress granted the EEOC the authority to collect such data, but also extended the authority to use legal proceedings to enforce compliance when employers ignore their obligation to provide the required information.  

The EEO-1 Component 1 report is a mandatory annual data collection that requires all private sector employers with 100 or more employees to submit workforce demographic data, including data by job category and sex and race or ethnicity, to the EEOC. This annual data collection is authorized by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 

The employers include companies from multiple states across retail, construction, restaurant, manufacturing, logistics, and service industries.  

As discussed here, the 2023 EEO-1 Component 1 data collection is currently underway. The EEOC began collecting EEO-1 Component 1 data from employers for the 2023 reporting cycle on April 30, 2024. The published deadline to file the 2023 EEO-1 Component 1 report was June 4, 2024. The EEOC publishes an Instruction Booklet for employers to assist them in complying with this mandatory reporting requirement, which is available at https://www.eeocdata.org/eeo1. 

For more information on EEO data collection – including late filing information – please visit https://www.eeoc.gov/data/eeo-data-collections.