A legislative committee voted Wednesday to remove references to women, minorities, people with disabilities and veterans from Tennessee’s equal employment opportunity plan, which has long guided the state in tracking its own employment practices and rectifying discriminatory practices.
Beginning October 7, Tennessee will no longer formally track or publicly report on the demographics of individuals interviewed, hired or promoted to jobs in the executive branch of state government.
Also eliminated is a requirement that state agencies take steps to recruit, promote and hire women and minorities if they are underrepresented in the state government workforce.
The rule change drew pushback from Democrats, a minority on the Republican-dominated Joint Government Operations Committee.
“We won’t have the data to know if there’s a problem or not,” said Rep. G.A. Hardaway, a Memphis Democrat.
The rule redefines Tennessee’s so-called equal employment opportunity plan, which spells out data-gathering requirements for the executive branch.
The data has been used for decades to guide government hiring managers into proactively taking steps to find, recruit and hire qualified individuals from demographic groups that are underrepresented in the government workforce.
The plan was formerly described as “a statistical document that identifies patterns in the...
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