Maxine Neuhauser, a Member of the Firm in the Employment, Labor, and Workforce Management and Health Care and Life Sciences practices, in the firm’s Newark office, was quoted in The Cook County Record, in “EEOC Changing Rules on Disseminating Business Info, Prompting Worries for Employers,” by Carrie Bradon.
Following is an excerpt:
The classification will be useful as EEOC considers requests for information to remain confidential. These requests are filed with the understanding that, upon review, the EEOC retains the right to refuse to consider the information confidential.
"It leaves in the hands of the EEOC the determination as to what is public or confidential and what is not," Neuhauser said. "As the policy or the program is written, it speaks in terms of EEOC staff may redact confidential information as necessary, prior to releasing information to a charging party."
Neuhauser believes that employers should be cautious about what they are disclosing to the EEOC. If a company has valuable trade information, they ought to designate it as such and be wary of oversharing their information, as failure to specify what information is private could become publicly available. She suggested sharing the necessary information, but being careful about classifying it in a way that such information is protected.
