The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) should not be required to disclose the EEO-1 data of federal contractors that objected to the data’s release, the Labor Department told a federal appellate court in a brief filed May 9, 2024.
In Center for Investigative Reporting v. U.S. Department of Labor, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California had ordered the release of the data, concluding that the Freedom of Information Act did not protect the data from disclosure.
DOL appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, arguing that EEO-1 data are exempt from disclosure under FOIA Exemption 4, which protects “trade secrets and commercial or financial information.” According to DOL, EEO-1 data constitute “commercial information” because they reveal a contractor’s headcount, personnel distribution, and demographics. DOL contends that EEO-1 data are commercially valuable because they show “staffing strategies and organizational structure, and the company’s success in hiring a diverse workforce” and thus provide “commercial insight” into a contractor’s operations.
While the appeal is pending, OFCCP will not release the data of contractors that filed objections.
Members of the Center for Workplace Compliance (CWC), our affiliated nonprofit membership association, can read more here.