Since 1966, companies have been required to send the federal government demographic data on their employees, part of an effort to combat discrimination. Under Trump, the data collection may end.

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It's been a yearly mandate since 1966. Companies with a hundred or more workers must send the federal government information about the race, ethnicity and sex of their employees. The government uses that data to root out discrimination on the job. Now the Trump administration is moving to get rid of the requirement. NPR's Andrea Hsu has more.

ANDREA HSU, BYLINE: To understand how this data is used, consider the lawsuit against Bass Pro Shops which began in 2011. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleged the company discriminated against Black and Hispanic job applicants by not hiring them - not just at one store but across the country, even in counties with sizable Black and Hispanic populations. David Lopez is a law professor at Arizona State. Back then, he was the EEOC's general counsel.

DAVID LOPEZ: Store by store by store, sort of the same idea. You had areas that had a significant number of Blacks and Latinos and either zero or very few at the stores.

HSU: And his agency knew that because it had Bass Pro's demographic data on file. It's called EEO-1 data. Now, the data by itself was not enough to bring a case. But Lopez says it was a green light to agency investigators to dig in and see what was going on.

LOPEZ: Because they had a reason to investigate, they were able to discover managerial comments that were reflective of discriminatory animus - that they were looking for a certain type of person.

HSU: Someone who was white, according to the government's complaint. In court filings, Bass Pro called the allegations threadbare. The case dragged on for years. Eventually, the company settled for $10 1/2 million. Bass Pro did not admit to any wrongdoing, but did agree to appoint a diversity director and to make good-faith efforts to recruit and hire nonwhite candidates. Lopez considered that a big win, one of many built on data.

LOPEZ: You could have a hunch, but there's nothing like the cold, hard numbers.

HSU: But now the EEOC has informed the White House of its proposal to stop collecting the data. The agency didn't respond to NPR's questions about the move, but earlier this spring, Chair Andrea Lucas told NPR one problem she has with the data is that it's shared too widely. She firmly believes that knowledge of workforce demographics should be confined to HR so that hiring managers don't end up swayed by a candidate's sex or race. Instead, she says, as some companies rushed to diversify their ranks...

ANDREA LUCAS: They were gathering that data and then they were publicizing it for the world.

HSU: She says it was a foreseeable risk...

LUCAS: That that data was going to start turning into race-motivated decision-making.

HSU: Now, she didn't name names, but the EEOC is investigating the hiring practices at Nike and The New York Times, two companies that did publish their demographic data. David Cohen of DCI Consulting advises companies on civil rights matters. He thinks the EEOC would want that data...

DAVID COHEN: To see if certain industries potentially have issues as relates to whites and men.

HSU: Under Lucas, investigating discrimination against white men is now an agency priority. For now, Cohen is telling his clients that keeping track of their employee demographics is a smart business move, whether the government requires it or not. Without it, he says, a company has no way of knowing if there might be a problem, like they're not recruiting in the right places or there's a bad manager or qualified candidates are getting screened out for no good reason.

COHEN: It's like you're driving a car without a dashboard. You have no idea what's going - am I speeding? Am I not speeding? Is my check engine light on? You have nothing.

HSU: David Lopez, the former general counsel, says, absent the data, a case like Bass Pro would be hard to put together.

LOPEZ: The bottom-line point is that hiring discrimination is really hard to detect.

HSU: Ending the data collection, he fears, will make it even harder. Andrea Hsu, NPR News.

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