The EEOC has proposed ending a civil-rights-era program collecting demographic information from private companies.

The top federal agency for promoting diversity across society is proposing pulling back on its primary initiative to collect demographic data, one that it has conducted for decades.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is considering no longer collecting demographic information including race, sex and national origin from major American companies, departing from a practice that began during the civil rights era of the 1960s and was critical to the agency’s efforts to root out workplace discrimination. The EEOC also wants to ax data reporting rules for apprenticeship programs, unions, state and local governments, and schools, as well as reporting requirements in other civil rights laws that protect workers, including those who are pregnant or have disabilities.

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Christine Webber, a civil rights and employment lawyer, said a decision to rescind reporting requirements for companies would run counter to the EEOC’s other efforts to collect data from law firms that the administration has targeted. The EEOC also recently won a court battle over requesting information about Jewish people at the University of Pennsylvania as part of an investigation into antisemitism.

“They know perfectly well that the EEOC needs data like that to do its job of enforcing the antidiscrimination laws,” Webber said. “Because if you want to show a pattern of conduct, a pattern of decision-making, data is an essential ingredient.”

A New Jersey federal judge held that RealPage and most landlords accused of price-fixing must face the state attorney general’s antitrust allegations because the complaint contends all but one landlord largely ceded individual pricing decisions to RealPage, according to a mixed decision unsealed Thursday that tossed some state claims.

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The state is represented by Brian F. McDonough, David Reichenberg, Jesse J. Sierant, Douglas T. Post and Blair Gerold of the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office and Brent W. Johnson, Emmy L. Levens, Robert A. Braun, Amanda K. Chuzi and Aaron J. Marks of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC.

SEC Chair Atkins said that companies should determine how often they want to report publicly on their finances, in one of his first public remarks since the commission proposed allowing companies to optionally switch to reporting semiannually instead of quarterly.

“Let the market decide,” Atkins said during a Tuesday interview at the 2026 FINRA Annual Conference.

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Optionality

Though Atkins has made clear his desire for companies to make fewer disclosures, the proposal rule would leave it up to companies to decide if they report quarterly or twice a year.

According to Laura Posner, a partner in Cohen Milstein’s securities litigation and investor protection practice, the potential for companies to have different reporting periods then their peers, or switch between quarterly and semi-annual reporting, could make comparisons complicated for investors.

She says a reduced amount of information available to investors could damage confidence in financial markets and contribute to market volatility.

“This is not what companies want, it’s not what investors want and it’s not what is good for the markets,” Posner says.

NextEra Energy has agreed to shell out $9.5 million to put to rest proposed class action allegations it conspired with other nuclear energy producers to fix wages, according to a notice filed Tuesday in Maryland federal court.

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The workers are represented by Matthew K. Handley, George F. Farah, Nicholas J. Jackson and William H. Anderson of Handley Farah & Anderson PLLC, Steve W. Berman, Abby R. Wolf, John Michael Grant, Shana E. Scarlett and Breanna Van Engelen of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP and Brent W. Johnson, Daniel H. Silverman, Alison S. Deich, Sabrina Merold and Nina L. Haug of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC.

The Trump administration must continue facing claims that it overstepped its authority by attempting to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, with a Maryland federal judge saying a lawsuit brought by the NAACP and three unions is strong enough to survive the administration’s dismissal motion.

U.S. District Judge Julie R. Rubin held Friday that the civil rights nonprofit and unions presented a compelling argument that the executive branch went too far by taking steps to shut down the Department of Education last year. Congress created the agency to perform specific functions and lawmakers set aside money for the agency to use, and the executive branch disregarded that when it canceled grants, ended programs and laid off agency employees en masse, the judge said.

“Plaintiffs point to defendants’ actions, which, they allege, have ended congressionally mandated programs and cut off congressional appropriations for same,” Judge Rubin said. “The court is satisfied that plaintiffs’ claims, as pled, plausibly allege that defendants have taken actions in direct contravention of the statutes creating such programs and directing appropriations thereto.”

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The NAACP and its affiliates are represented by Joseph M. Sellers, Ethan Judd, Ryan Wheeler and Jenna Waldman of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC and Robert Kim, Jessica Levin, Wendy Lecker and Theresa Luhm of the Education Law Center.

The U.S. Department of Labor ‘s proposed changes to its independent contractor classification test could result in fewer workers being able to avail themselves of Family and Medical Leave Act and PUMP Act protections, as well as add to compliance challenges posed by a patchwork of state laws, experts say.

The Labor Department in late April closed the book on a 60-day comment period for its proposed rule to reset the agency’s test for determining employee status under the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act, and the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act.

The rule proposes replacing a standard for determining whether a worker is an employee or independent contractor that was adopted during the Biden administration with a five-prong economic reality test, which tracks the framework that was in place during the first Trump administration.

Although disputes about worker classification often arise in the wage-hour context, attorneys said the updated standard could have wide-ranging ripple effects, including to whether workers can avail themselves of leave under the FMLA or nursing accommodations under the three-year-old Providing Urgent Maternal Protections for Nursing Mothers, or PUMP, Act.

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D. Michael Hancock, of counsel at plaintiff-side Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC and a former assistant administrator for the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division, said the proposed rule “opens the door to reclassifying some employees as independent contractors,” and it “certainly is going to create a lot of confusion among both employees and employers about who is protected.”

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DOL Test, State Laws May Not Align

Hancock of Cohen Milstein noted that more than two dozen states have adopted variations of the ABC test for determining whether someone is an employee or contractor. That framework, Hancock said, is “much clearer, much more definitive, [and] much more certain in its application.”

In those states where more robust legal protections are in place, Hancock said the impact of the federal regulation will likely be more limited. He added that courts evaluating classification disputes aren’t bound by the Labor Department’s test, he said.

“It might be meaningful for some courts, but it certainly isn’t binding for any court,” Hancock said. “Having said that, I think that it’s going to create a direct conflict with many of the courts who’ve spoken on this matter in the past, and so it’s going to be an interesting evolution as courts try to determine what, if anything, this regulation is going to mean as applied to specific cases.”

More workers will need to limit putative wage and hour collective actions to a single state or seek to bring a wider action where their employer is based or primarily does business, after the Second Circuit joined others in barring out-of-state workers from joining collective actions, attorneys said.

The panel’s ruling on Monday in Provencher v. Bimbo Bakeries USA Inc. that the lower court lacked personal jurisdiction over out-of-state workers’ claims was the latest appellate decision on the issue.

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“The issue is increasingly settled,” said Rebecca Ojserkis of worker-side firm Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC. “Where those collective actions are brought by workers within a particular state, this doesn’t really change anything.”

But for proposed collective actions that would include workers from multiple states, as in Bimbo Bakeries, or nationwide, “those cases are going to have to be brought where the employer is either headquartered or has their principal place of business,” she said.

The Second Circuit panel relied on the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2017 decision in Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court of California. The justices held in that case that individuals outside the state where the case originated lacked a connection to the state, so they could not join a class action there.

Moving forward, workers are better off filing broader putative collective actions where the business makes its home, Ojserkis said.

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As the issue becomes settled in more circuits, new questions could arise. One could be what happens when workers are suing joint employers that are located in different states, Ojserkis said.

“That requires plaintiffs to file two separate actions, which is completely inefficient for the courts and for the parties, and perhaps will lead to defendants coming around in those situations and saying, let’s consolidate,” she said.

A similar wrinkle could be what happens when employers have multiple headquarters or primary places of business.

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Yet another upcoming issue could be more states enacting “consent by registration” laws that require out-of-state businesses that register in the state to agree to personal jurisdiction.

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the legality of such legislation in Mallory v. Norfolk Southern Railway Co. in 2023, after the Pennsylvania justices struck down such a law in that state. Kansas and Georgia also have explicit “consent by registration” laws, and some others have statutes that state courts have interpreted as establishing consent.

Ojserkis said, “We might see more of those kinds of statutes popping up, and there might be more challenges to those statutes by employers about whether or not those statutes hold water.”

The Spring 2026 edition of the Shareholder Advocate, our quarterly securities litigation and investor protection newsletter, is now available. This issue features:

• Laura Posner and Benjamin Jackson on the 30th anniversary of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act
• Kate Fitzgerald on the rise in pump-and-dump schemes
• Laura Posner and Key Jewler on investors’ lawsuit against The Trade Desk over its Kokai ad platform
• Jay Chaudhuri on the DOL’s replacement of its Retirement Security Rule
• A team profile of Cristine Turner, Senior Advisor for Investor Relations
• An update on poultry workers’ wage-fixing suit

Uber was recently hit with another unfavorable verdict in the second bellwether trial in multidistrict litigation over driver sex assaults, and another determination that the ride-hailing company can be liable for its drivers’ negligence does not bode well for the company, experts said.

Following a four-day trial and about three hours of deliberation, a North Carolina federal jury on April 20 found an Uber Technologies Inc. driver had committed battery against passenger Brianna Mensing, who accused him of grabbing her leg in 2019, and awarded her $5,000 in damages for emotional distress.

Earlier in the case, U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer, who is overseeing the MDL and presided over Mensing’s trial, had ruled that Uber is a “common carrier” under North Carolina law and therefore has a “non-delegable duty” to safely transport passengers.

The MDL, which encompasses more than 3,100 cases, alleges Uber knew since 2014 that drivers for its app preyed on and sexually assaulted passengers and that the company didn’t adopt safety measures such as cameras and enhanced background checks.

In the first bellwether trial in February, an Arizona federal jury determined that the driver was acting as the “apparent agent” of Uber, making the ride-hailing company liable for the assault, and awarded $8.5 million in compensatory damages.

A Win Is a Win

One plaintiffs attorney and former prosecutor praised the outcome of the North Carolina trial, telling Law360 that despite the modest damages award, it was a solid victory for the plaintiffs.

“It’s a superb outcome in terms of the finding of liability against Uber,” said Takisha Richardson of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, which is not handling any Uber MDL cases. “The biggest challenge in these cases is whether Uber is liable for the conduct of these drivers.”

Richardson, a former Special Victims Unit state prosecutor for Palm Beach, Florida, said Uber’s position continues to be that its drivers are individual contractors and therefore the company is not liable for their conduct.

“But the jury verdict in favor of the plaintiff, despite the numeric damages award, is very specific in holding Uber liable for the conduct of their drivers,” she said.

The case is important, Richardson said, because it represented the lower end of the spectrum of sexual assaults and showed the company can still be held accountable, even if the driver’s misconduct is to a lesser degree than a rape.

“We all understand what a rape is, and that’s a very simple concept for the broad public to understand,” she said. “But something of this level — the touching of the inner thigh — that, too is a violation of one’s body and there’s a consequence for that.”

Richardson said she “applauded” Mensing’s counsel for taking the case despite the potentially low monetary stakes.

“The status of a woman to have complete autonomy over her body and whether she wants to be touched is something to be valued,” she said. “There should be a sentence to pay for that.”

The Cohen Milstein attorney said she is interested in seeing the range of allegations in the other bellwether cases. The next bellwether trial is scheduled to take place in the Northern District of California in September, according to court records.

“I want to see how much it’s going to take in terms of getting Uber to come to the table and negotiate a meaningful settlement,” Richardson said.

Richardson said she thinks it’ll take about “half a dozen or so” unfavorable outcomes in the bellwether trials before Uber even thinks about settling.

“There have been two extremes in the losses for Uber,” she said. “I wonder if there will be some in-between cases that will give them a range of verdicts.”

Hartford HealthCare should be forced to produce 182 documents withheld under the attorney-client privilege from an antitrust lawsuit, say a Teamsters health plan and a transit district that claim the hospital group is exercising monopoly power over regional health services markets within Connecticut.

In a motion filed Saturday, Estuary Transit District and Teamsters 671 Health Service & Insurance Plan claimed many of the withheld records must be shared because they contain business or policy discussions, not legal advice. In some instances, a Hartford HealthCare Corp. attorney was copied on a message but was neither the sender nor primary recipient, according to the health plan and the transit district.

The entities also say Hartford HealthCare’s privilege log fails to explain whether email attachments contain protected information or were merely coupled to messages seeking legal advice.

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Estuary Transit District and Teamsters 671 Health Service & Insurance Plan are represented by Michael B. Eisenkraft, Christopher J. Bateman, Silvie Saltzman, Brent W. Johnson and Nathaniel D. Regenold of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, Eric L. Cramer, Daniel Walker, Caitlin Coslett and Laurel Boman of Berger Montague, Douglas A. Millen, Matthew W. Ruan, Robert J. Wozniak, Michael E. Moskovitz and Samantha M. Gupta of Justice Jagher London & Millen LLC, Frank R. Schirripa and Scott Jacobsen of Hach Rose Schirripa & Cheverie LLP, and Jonathan M. Shapiro and Mario K. Cerame of Aeton Law Partners LLP.