As we previously reported, a federal judge recently reinstated an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) rule that requires larger employers to report to the EEOC summary pay information by job category along sex, race and ethnicity lines in their Employer Information EEO-1 report.[1] This new information, known as “Component 2” of the EEO-1, will need to be included in addition to what covered employers must already provide in Component 1 of the report (i.e., data on the ethnicity, race and sex of workers by job category).
The court’s order, however, left unclear the deadline for employers to submit Component 2 data, along with the scope of data that employers need to submit to the EEOC. Following the parties in the litigation submitting briefs regarding the timing issue, the court set a September 30, 2019, deadline for employers to submit Component 2 data.
With respect to the scope of the requirement to report Component 2 data, the court previously required the EEOC to collect two years of data. More recently, the court gave the EEOC the option to waive collection of EEO-1 data for 2017 by collecting such information for 2019 during the 2020 EEO-1 reporting period. Last week, the EEOC declined this option and released guidance indicating that employers will need to submit 2017 and 2018 Component 2 data by September 30.[2]
Employers should be mindful, however, that their deadline to submit Component 1 data remains May 31, 2019, and, although the EEOC previously allowed employers to obtain an automatic thirty-day extension, the EEOC has reduced the timeframe available to employers seeking extensions to just two weeks (i.e., June 14, 2019). Employers that need more than a two-week extension must “summarize the issue [the] company is experiencing, and the Employer Data Team will provide assistance.” Unlike the reporting of the Component 1 data, there does not appear to be a mechanism by which employers can obtain an extension of the September 30 deadline to submit Component 2 data.
The Department of Justice appealed the court’s decision regarding the requirement to collect Component 2 data; however, according to the EEOC’s guidance, the appeal does not impact these deadlines. Thus, employers should plan to submit Component 1 data to the EEOC by May 31, 2019, (or ask for an extension) and submit Component 2 data by September 30, 2019. We will continue to report on any updates or changes to these deadlines.