A petition by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to review and possibly reverse the EEO-1 pay data mandate by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which takes effect on March 31, 2018, is under consideration by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), with no certain outlook. Meanwhile, acting EEOC chair Victoria Lipnic seems mostly against the new rule.

The pay data rule requires companies with 100 or more employees to report summary pay data categorized by employees’ gender, race and ethnicity on the EEO-1 form required yearly.

The Chamber of Commerce and 27 trade associations in February asked the Office of Management and Budget to reconsider its 2016 approval of the revised EEO-1 form under the Paperwork Reduction Act.

Lipnic, a Republican, voted against the new pay data requirement, and speaking March 30 at the American Bar Association’s National Conference on Equal Employment Opportunity Law, she expressed doubts that the rule’s results will outweigh its costs.

“To say I’m dubious of the time estimates [of preparing the data] would be an understatement,” Lipnic said, suggesting the cost of complying might be too great.