Kenneth Marcus, the president of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, urged the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on Tuesday to repeal a longstanding rule requiring large employers to keep and report data on the racial, ethnic and sex makeup of their workforce.

Marcus was one of a slew of speakers who appeared before the commission to testify for and against the rule, which the commission has proposed repealing. He argued that the reporting requirements have resulted in employers feeling pressure to make hiring decisions based on race, rather than encouraging equal treatment.

“The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission should be fighting against discrimination rather than incentivizing employers to get their numbers right in ways that might violate the very laws that the agency was established to enforce,” Marcus said. “The commission should … avoid viewing either the collection or the elimination of demographic data as an end in itself. The proper objective is vigorous enforcement of Title VII against actual discrimination.”

Marcus said the EEOC should be focused on investigating and pursuing claims of discrimination against individuals, rather than monitoring demographic data.

“At the same time, we respectfully urge the commission to make equally clear that the elimination of demographic reporting cannot and should not result in diminished attention to other forms of discrimination, affecting not only Jews but also other groups,” Marcus said. “The measure of our civil rights laws is not whether the government counts members of identity groups. It is whether the government protects everyone equally.”

He said that the Jewish community’s experience “illustrates both the promise and the peril of demographic data collection. … History demonstrates that neither demographic classification nor demographic invisibility has ensured equal treatment. Only vigilant enforcement of the law can do that.”

“History demonstrates that data collection can protect vulnerable communities in some circumstances while exposing them to extraordinary danger in others,” he said.

In the past, Marcus argued, governments including the Nazi regime have used registries and other records to identify Jewish communities for persecution. In other cases, he continued, discrimination against Jews has gone overlooked and unrecognized based on demographic data because Jewish identity does not fit neatly into traditionally recognized demographic categories.

“Aggregate demographic data can therefore obscure rather than illuminate the reality of the discrimination which Jewish workers are facing,” Marcus said, arguing that a recent focus by employers on “demographic frameworks to guide diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives” has led to Jews and antisemitism being ignored, overlooked and stigmatized.