February 20, 2026 – The United States District Court for the Northern District of California had previously granted a stay of the production of 75,000 EEO-1 Reports (pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)), pending resolution of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The underlying litigation arose in response to FOIA requests from the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR), seeking EEO-1 Reports filed by more than 24,000 federal contractors from 2016-2020. The annual reports sought by CIR contain data about the gender, racial or ethnic background, and job categories of the responding companies’ employees. Previous reports and details of the underlying suit can be found here and here.

Then, on July 30, 2025, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s ruling that the EEO-1 reports had to be provided, finding that FOIA Exemption 4 – which exempts from disclosure any commercial or financial information including trade secrets obtained from a person or by the government that is also privileged or confidential – does not apply to the EEO-1 Reports. The Ninth Circuit’s decision became final after the OFCCP declined to seek rehearing of the issue, and on February 9, 2026, the district court ordered the following:

• The five bellwether objectors’ EEO-1 Reports would be released by the DOL to CIR by February 11, 2026.
• The DOL would provide notice to the non-bellwether federal contractors of its intention to release their 2016-2020 EEO-1 Reports on February 11, 2026.
• The EEO-1 Reports of the non-bellwether federal contractors would be released on February 25, 2026.

Importantly, however, there has been no decision concerning the release of EEO-1 Report data concerning the 621 entities deemed by the DOL not to be federal contractors during the 2016-2020 time period. Moreover, the decision to release the federal contractor EEO-1 Report data discussed herein, is limited to the data withheld pursuant to Exemption 4 objections, as described above. Accordingly, a federal contractor’s data from this time period may not be released if such contractor submitted timely objections on other grounds, such as asserting other statutory exemptions to FOIA.

If you have any questions about how this court order may impact your business operations, or if you would like assistance in reviewing your 2016-2020 Type 2 EEO – 1 data to identify any trends either to prepare for questions from employees or from external parties, please reach out to a Kullman Law attorney for assistance.