On July 22, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) sent a proposed rule to the Federal Register’s Public Inspection desk to rescind and remove the filing requirements for the EEO-1, EEO-2, EEO-3, EEO-4, EEO-5 and EEO-6 reports, along with the recordkeeping and record-preservation requirements tied to those reports. The proposal will be officially published in the Federal Register on July 23 and will carry a 30-day comment period with a public hearing on August 11, 2026.
Reporting Requirements and Proposed Rescission
The six reports rescinded by the proposed rule cover different entities:
- EEO-1: Employer Information Report
- EEO-2: Apprenticeship Information Report (Inactive)
- EEO-3: Local Union Equal Employment Opportunity Report
- EEO-4: State and Local Government Recordkeeping Report
- EEO-5: Elementary-Secondary Staff Information Report
- EEO-6: Higher Education Staff Information Report (Inactive)
The EEO-1 report covers the broadest set of employers, requiring data collection from private-sector employers with 100 or more employees, and federal contractors with 50 or more employees and a contract or subcontract of $50,000 or more. Notably, higher education is not required to file the EEO-1. Instead, higher education submitted data through the EEO-6 report until 1993, when the Department of Education began collecting data on the EEO-6 for postsecondary education through the annual Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) Staff Survey. The rescission of the EEO-6 is largely symbolic due to the continued use of the IPEDS Staff Survey. The EEOC asserted that the outdated reporting requirements still need to be rescinded through formal rulemaking, which is why they are included in this proposal.
The EEOC’s proposal does not indicate any changes to IPEDS reporting that could result from this rescission. However, CUPA-HR will monitor for changes to the IPEDS reporting requirements from the Department of Education as they may arise. Additionally, institutions should review any state reporting requirements that mirrored or used the data previously collected by the EEOC in light of this proposed rescission.