The Atlanta Journal Constitution: What end of EEOC sex, race data collection could mean for Ga. workers, employers

August 21. 2026

National Economic Justice Director Seher Khawaja is featured in an Atlantic Journal Constitution article about the EEOC’s attempts to rescind workplace demographic data collection, a 60-year-old practice that helps identify and root out discrimination. (View the article as a PDF.)

Seher Khawaja, the national economic justice director for Equal Rights Advocates, called the agency’s arguments “both absurd and damaging.” “The EEOC, when it created this data collection, recognized a very simple yet important reality — we cannot fix what we cannot see,” Khawaja told The Atlanta Journal Constitution. Her civil rights organization focuses on advancing the rights of women and girls across the nation.

“Rescinding the data collection would bring us back into the dark. It would eliminate one of the federal government’s most important transparency and accountability tools to identify workplace disparities, segregation and inequities,” she said. …

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act has workforce demographic record-keeping requirements, even if the data are not submitted to the EEOC, so the proposed change may “create a lot of confusion and uncertainty for employers,” Khawaja added. “It actually puts them in a very precarious place in terms of what their compliance obligations are under Title VII, and that’s before even taking into account that states and localities are also really stepping up to fill in these gaps,” she said.

Read the article online or as a PDF.