The Volokh Conspiracy
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County Contractors May Be Required to Report How Many Jews (Among Other Minority Groups) They Employ
From the Wayne County (Mich.) Municipal Code; this is the county that contains Detroit:
Sec. 55-14. - Nondiscrimination by county contractors.
(1) A contractor shall, as a condition of being awarded a contract, certify in writing that it is in compliance with the provisions of Section 120-192 of the Wayne County Procurement Ordinance [which generally bans discrimination based on "race, color, creed, national origin, age, marital status, handicap, sex, religion, familial status, height or weight, or prior criminal conviction(s)"].
(2) Upon request, each prospective contractor shall submit to the County data showing current total employment by occupational category, sex and minority group and shall provide copies of its equal employment opportunity policies and procedures.
Sec. 55-6(17) defines "minority" as:
A person who is Black or African American, Native American, Alaskan native, Hispanic or Latino, Asian, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, Middle Eastern, Jewish or Caribbean.
The ordinance was apparently enacted in 2020. I submitted a public records request seeking to see copies of such reports, and was told that "the records do not exist," which may mean that no requests for such reports had been made so far.
UPDATE: Just to be clear, I noted Jews here because the other categories are pretty old hat. Such reports, as I understand it, are pretty standard procedure for most of the other groups; consider the EEOC EEO-1 reporting form, for instance. My sense is that Middle Easterners have been added to the list in many places, as they have recently been to the EEO-1 form. And I assumed that the Caribbean data collection is pretty closely related to the collection of data about blacks and perhaps Hispanics, though I'm not sure. (It's true that there are whites who have lived in the Caribbean for a long time, but that's true of Africa and Asia as well.)
But I've never seen any such reporting requirements include Jews before. And my sense is that, while people are pretty used to having to identify employees by race and ask them "can you please tell us which racial or broad ethnic group you belong to, for government reporting purposes" (whether or not you think that's right?), it's pretty rare for employers to ask, "Are you Jewish? We need to count Jewish employees for our government reports."
