On April 22, Andrea Lucas, chair of the Equal Employment Alternative Fee (EEOC), addressed a gaggle of lecturers, authorized consultants, and group advocates at a convention at Harvard College.
The dialog instantly turned to the elephant in the room: the EEOC’s investigation into anti-Semitism at the College of Pennsylvania. As a part of the investigation, the EEOC subpoenaed the college for the names and contacts of workers affiliated with Jewish teams at the college, a transfer that stirred controversy and raised security considerations from college students and college.
As she was not at liberty to talk about ongoing litigation, Lucas spoke normally phrases and supplied a easy clarification about why the EEOC collects information. Throughout the fee’s 60-year historical past, the agency has collected data, she mentioned.
“Why?” she requested. “As a result of there is no such thing as a different method to defend victims of harassment or discrimination except you accumulate details about them.”
Lower than a month later, the EEOC submitted a proposal to rescind the regulation requiring employers, unions, and state and native governments with greater than 100 workers to report their racial and gender demographics, ending six many years of precedent. These guidelines additionally apply to federal contractors with greater than 50 workers.
The transfer comes as the fee beneath Lucas has begun a campaign in opposition to diversity efforts and is trying to find circumstances of discrimination in opposition to white males. In December, Lucas posted a video on social media calling on white males to report discrimination they’ve confronted at work primarily based on their race or intercourse. In the months since, the EEOC has launched investigations into Coca-Cola for internet hosting a two-day journey and networking occasion for feminine workers and Nike for race-restricted mentorship and management alternatives.
The proposal to finish demographic reporting is in keeping with Lucas’s broader effort to reframe civil rights enforcement away from systemic or unintentional discrimination and towards particular person claims. If employers cease monitoring workforce demographics, it turns into far tougher to determine patterns—disproportionate layoffs of Black employees, pay gaps for ladies—that function the evidentiary basis for class-action and systemic discrimination circumstances. These are exactly the sorts of circumstances which have traditionally benefited minority employees.
In contrast, the discrimination claims Lucas has been actively soliciting—from white males alleging reverse discrimination—have a tendency to be particular person in nature and don’t require combination demographic information to prosecute. Eliminating the reporting requirement, then, doesn’t simply scale back the EEOC’s investigative capability equally throughout the board; it selectively weakens the instruments used to pursue the circumstances Lucas seems least eager about bringing.
The EEOC didn’t reply to Fortune’s requests for remark.
Final week at Fortune’s Office Innovation Summit, Lucas repeated a chorus she used to body the EEOC’s work since she started main the fee in 2025.
“We’re the Equal Employment Alternative Fee. We’re not the Equitable Outcomes Fee,” she mentioned, arguing that Title VII protects any race or intercourse in opposition to discrimination, not particular teams.
The information the EEOC collects from employers is a vital start line when a declare is filed, Chai Feldblum, who served as an EEOC commissioner from 2009 to 2019, defined. She is president of EEO Leaders, a watchdog group of former high-level EEOC and Division of Labor officers.
“In a few of the essential, large-scale employment considerations, employment claims, it will scale back the efficacy of the investigation to not have that data already on file,” Feldblum mentioned.
She added that when the fee begins an investigation, they will request information, similar to in the College of Pennsylvania case, as a result of Jewish id information just isn’t collected as a part of conventional EEO-1 varieties. However extra issues might come up for investigators if the rescission is handed and employers cease amassing information for a time frame, she defined.
“This EEOC just isn’t strolling away from amassing information to examine the claims they suppose are problematic proper now,” Feldman mentioned. “What they’re doing with this proposed rescission is eradicating a mechanism by which employers can self-regulate by seeing what their points are.”
When talking at Harvard, Lucas appeared to agree on the significance of knowledge assortment.
“There isn’t any different method for me to find a way to get cash to victims who’ve been harmed. And I consider in lots of circumstances have been grievously harmed except I do know one thing about somebody’s affiliation with a spiritual group,” Lucas mentioned. “The similar precept, after all, is true for any protected attribute. I can’t defend Black employees if I don’t accumulate details about the Black employees who utilized to a job or are workers proper now who could be inside class.”
“That’s the nature of civil rights enforcement.”
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