EEOC Must Continue Collecting Pay Data Until January 31, 2020 (US)

On October 29, 2019, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ordered that the EEOC must continue to take all steps necessary to complete EEO-1 Component 2 data collection for calendar years 2017 and 2018.  As we recently discussed here, the EEOC filed a motion on October 8, 2019 asking the court to issue an order deeming the Component 2 data collection “complete.”  The court denied the EEOC’s request and ordered the agency to keep collecting pay data until January 31, 2020. 

The court relied on its own April 25, 2019 Order, which states that the pay data collection will not be deemed complete “until the percentage of EEO-1 reporters that have submitted their required EEO-1 Component 2 reports equals or exceeds the mean percentage of EEO-1 reporters that actually submitted EEO-1 reports in each of the past four reporting years.”   The parties disagreed about how to calculate the mean percentage, but the court determined that the EEOC should calculate the mean percentage, as it said in its April order, based on reporters that actually submitted EEO-1 reports.  The court explained that this measure of completeness is “based on the EEOC’s practice of permitting reports to be filed late in previous collection years.”  Therefore, because the agency continues to collect late EEO-1 reports within a specific grace period (in this case at least through November 11, 2019), the court held that “consistent with past and current agency practice, the proper measure of completeness is not based on the number of reports submitted at the filing deadline.”

Further, although the court recognized the potential burden of collecting the data from every reporter, the court noted that the EEOC has not yet even collected the average response rate it calculates for reporters who submitted data within the grace period (as opposed to the deadline) in previous years.  Thus, the court ordered that the EEOC must continue to collect Component 2 data until January 31, 2020, and must continue to provide status reports to the plaintiffs and the court every 21 days, resuming on November 1, 2019 and continuing through January 31, 2020.  These reports must include a description of all steps the agency will take to facilitate collection during the following three-week period and should indicate whether the EEOC is on track to complete the collection by the new deadline.   Finally, on or before February 7, 2020, the parties must submit a joint status report regarding the completeness of the EEO-1 Component 2 data collection and a proposed schedule for future deadlines, if needed.