In the latest development in a case that began in 2019, a California federal court has ruled that EEO-1 reports do not contain the type of confidential trade secret, commercial or financial information that is protected from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), and as a result, the EEO-1 data for objecting contractors of a 2022 FOIA request to the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) must be produced. However, the OFCCP has until February 20, 2024, to appeal the court’s decision, so the production deadline has been extended to the same date.
The FOIA request was made by the Center for Investigative Reporting, a California-based nonprofit news organization, for Type 2 Consolidated EEO-1 Report data submitted by federal coOIAntractors and first-tier subcontractors from 2016-2020. Reports of non-objecting contractors were released in November 2022.
For more background, see the FAQs for the CCP Submitter Notice Response Portal set up to respond to the CIR FOIA request; see also our previous post.