Employee Census and Antisemitism
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is considering eliminating the requirement that large companies submit annual data on their workforce numbers by race, gender, and ethnic origin, even in the absence of any allegations of discrimination.
I view this as a welcome step, as it would redirect civil rights laws toward their original purpose: “protecting individuals from discrimination, rather than compelling employers to achieve specific racial or gender quotas.”
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employers from discriminating on the basis of religion, race, sex, or national origin, and grants the Commission the authority to request necessary records to enforce the law. However, the law was designed to ensure equality for every individual, not to manage the workforce according to demographic proportions. When every large company is required to count its employees by race and gender annually, it encourages a focus on numbers rather than treating individuals equally.
Admittedly, demographic data has some utility. It can reveal broad trends and help the Commission prioritize enforcement efforts, but it cannot, on its own, prove or disprove the existence of discrimination. In many cases, these reports have become a substitute for the harder work of investigating actual complaints. As Commission Chair Andrea Lucas has stated, collecting race and gender data without specific allegations of discrimination may hinder enforcement and raise constitutional concerns.
The recent resurgence of antisemitism has demonstrated the dangers of categorizing people into broad racial groups. Many institutions and companies have adopted diversity, equity, and inclusion frameworks that divide employees into categories of “marginalized” and “privileged.” Within these classifications, American Jews are sometimes placed into racial categories unrelated to Jewish identity, thereby excluding them from discussions about workplace discrimination, even as antisemitic harassment has escalated.
Worse still, some of these frameworks divide the world into “oppressors” and “oppressed,” thereby lending credibility to the stereotype that Jews wield disproportionate influence and privilege. At Stanford University in 2021, Jewish employees were included in a group associated with “white accountability” under an internal diversity and inclusion program, while manifestations of antisemitism on campus went unaddressed.
We must not forget history. Nazi Germany used census records and official data to identify and arrest Jews, and government lists have been used for centuries to impose discriminatory taxes and expulsions. Consequently, Jewish communities are wary of government demographic classification. The disappearance of Jews within data sets or their highlighting therein has not protected them from discrimination. “What protected them was enforcement in response to genuine complaints.”
I witnessed this firsthand when I directed a federal civil rights office during two presidential administrations. Antisemitic discrimination today may manifest in stereotypes about Jewish wealth, influence, and loyalty; in discrimination linked to religious practices; in hostility toward those believed to have ties to Israel; or in retaliation against those who object to such practices. None of this appears in a demographic report. In 2025, the Commission’s investigation into antisemitism complaints at Columbia University concluded with a $21 million settlement, the largest of its kind in nearly two decades.
If the commission is to perform its duties properly, it must invest in individual investigations, discontinue annual reports, and redirect resources toward genuine complaints. “The quality of civil rights enforcement is not measured by the volume of data the government collects, but by how effectively it protects people from discrimination when and where it occurs.”
For American Jews, and for everyone covered by Title VII, the promise of equality has delivered only one outcome: “law enforcement that responds to real discrimination. It is time to change course, stop chasing quotas and numbers, and return to protecting citizens.”
* Chief executive officer of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law. He served as Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education from 2003 to 2004 and from 2018 to 2020.
