The pay disclosures were finalized by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in the summer of 2016, but the Office of Management and Budget froze the expanded requirements after President Trump took office. The National Women’s Law Center and other groups sued, and on March 4, Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled in their favor, saying that the government didn’t properly justify its decision.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which strongly opposed the expanded reporting, says it would cost businesses more than $400 million annually. The EEOC says it’s more like $53 million. In a 2017 letter to OMB director Mick Mulvaney, the Chamber urged the agency to reconsider the approved collection, saying the EEOC “materially underestimated the burden that the revised form would impose.”
Under rules adopted in 2015, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission requires public companies to compare their workers’ median pay with their CEO’s total compensation, including salary, bonus and equity awards. After companies registered similar concerns about the burden of reporting based on their entire payroll, the SEC allowed them to use statistical sampling. The first results were posted last year.