Bloomberg Law, Law School Students Sue EEOC Over Big Law Diversity Scrutiny:

Three law school students sued the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on Tuesday over the agency’s probe into Big Law diversity hiring practices.

The students—anonymously referenced in their complaint as Doe 1, Doe 2 and Doe 3—asked a District of Columbia federal judge to order the EEOC and acting chair Andrea Lucas to withdraw investigative letters sent to 20 of the country’s most prominent law firms, asking for demographic hiring data dating as far back as 2015.

From the complaint:

Plaintiffs are law students who have applied to or worked at one or more of the twenty law firms. The letters sent by Acting Chair Lucas demand sensitive personal information about Plaintiffs and their employment history: their name, sex, race, contact information, academic performance, and compensation. Plaintiffs expected that their personal information would be kept confidential to the firm at which they worked or to which they applied unless the firms were legally required to disclose it. Defendants have no legal authority to collect this data absent an ongoing charge investigation against the firms. But now that Defendants have demanded it, Plaintiffs are deeply worried that their data will be divulged, and that they may be targeted as a result.

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