Because the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission mothballed due to the partial federal government shutdown, the question arises as to whether employers need to file their EEO-1 reports with the agency on the current schedule.

The short answer is: Maybe.

Attorney James A. Patton of the law firm of Ogletree Deakins says the EEOC had planned to open the 2018 EEO-1 filing website during the second or third week of January 2019, with a planned filing deadline of March 31, 2019.

More recent information suggests that the EEOC had previously planned to open the EEO-1 filing website at the end of of January.

The 2017 EEO-1 filing cycle began Jan. 24, 2018, with a filing deadline of March 31, 2018. In April 2018, the deadline was extended to June 1, 2018.

No explanation was given for extending this deadline. However, there were changes to the filing website, including the implementation of extra security measures, as well as delays in responses to mergers and acquisitions and spin-off requests. The 2017 EEO-1 filing website closed on Oct. 1, 2018.

As the government shutdown ground on, the opening date for the EEO-1 filing website remained in doubt. Now that the shutdown has ended, it is unknown how long it will take to bring the filing website back online. There is background work that would normally have been done during the time that EEOC employees were furloughed.

If so, work will need to be done before the filing website can re-open. At this point, it seems likely that the expected March 31, 2019, deadline for 2018 EEO-1 filings will be extended, providing affected private employers and government contractors more time to complete their 2018 EEO-1 filings.

As employers await the filing website’s re-opening, the attorney Patton suggests that it would be a good idea for them to gather the appropriate employment data from the fourth quarter of 2018 that they will use to complete their 2018 filings.