Workplace discrimination isolates. When a Black manager is passed over for a promotion, or a pregnant worker is quietly sidelined, they are left with a polite excuse and a lingering suspicion. They cannot see the company-wide spreadsheet. They cannot know if others are hitting the same invisible wall. For 60 years, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has kept a spreadsheet of its own: an annual demographic snapshot compiled from employer reports. That nationwide record lets the agency see beyond any one complaint.

Last Tuesday, however, the EEOC’s Republican majority voted 2–1 to begin dismantling that reporting system. Two days later, the proposal entered the Federal Register, arguing that requiring employers to classify workers by race and sex may itself violate the constitutional guarantee of equal protection. The rule is not final: comments are due on 24 August, and a hearing is set for 11 August.

In plain English: the federal government wants to stop keeping the count it created to tell whether employers obey the law.

The Civil Rights Act will remain on the books, helping this change slip past notice – and perhaps outlast those behind it. An administration does not have to repeal a civil right if it can blind the agency charged with enforcing it. You cannot prove a pattern the government has chosen not to see. Yet blindness is not quite the plan. The EEOC would stop looking routinely across the workforce while keeping the power to examine particular employers when its leaders choose. That is not colorblindness. It is selective attention.

Since 1966, private employers with at least 100 workers, and certain federal contractors with at least 50, have........

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