A rule aimed at ending wage discrimination has been blocked by the Trump administration. The rule, issued by the Obama administration in 2016, sought to require federal contractors and private companies with more than 100 employees to report pay data by race, gender and identity to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Under the proposal, employers who are already required to file annual EEO-1 report would have been required to submit summary pay data along with the currently required data on the number of individuals employed by race, ethnicity and sex across 10 job categories and 12 pay bands. Reporting of individual salaries of employees would not have been required. In an Aug. 29 letter to the EEOC, the Office of Management and Budget indicated concerns that some aspects of the information collection “lack practical utility, are unnecessarily burdensome, and do not adequately address privacy and confidentiality issues.” The ABA supported the enhanced data collection requirements when they were announced last year. In comments submitted to the EEOC in March 2016, ABA Governmental Affairs Director Thomas M. Susman wrote, “The ABA has long supported, as an indispensable step to eradicating discrimination in the workplace and the justice system, the systematic collection of data to measure the scope of the problem, inform public debate, and develop fact-based remedies.” He explained that wage discrimination remains a present-day widespread and pernicious problem in the workplace and that numerous authoritative studies have concluded that such discrimination is a significant factor in perpetuating the gender wage gap and contributes to wage disparities across various groups.