The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has filed a motion asking a federal judge to declare "complete" its collection of EEO-1 "Category 2" pay data.

According to the agency, the collection should have been considered "complete" when 72.7 percent of employers required to submit the compensation data had done so. As of October 8, according to the EEOC, 75.9 percent of covered employers had submitted their data.

Here's the big "but": The 72.7 percent figure was based on the EEOC's own analysis, based on EEO-1 "Component 1" data collections in prior years. The EEOC admits that in prior years the final collections of Component 1 data exceeded 90 percent. However, the EEOC says that is because the agency continued to accept Component 1 data long after the stated deadlines -- in some cases, for more than a year afterward.

In any event, the EEOC is asking Judge Tanya Chutkan to rule that the EEOC has done its duty, and to relieve the agency of its obligation to renew its contract with the outside contractor that has been handling the data collection. (The current contract allows the contractor -- NORC of the University of Chicago -- to continue processing data through November 11, but the contract is up for renewal on November 1.)

According to the EEOC's court filing, the plaintiffs in the lawsuit that created this mess think the data collection is not complete until the EEOC has a response rate of 98.25 percent.

Want to know more about this never-ending story? Here are links to a sampling of our prior coverage:

EEO-1 pay data collection is back on

EEO-1 comp data is due September 30

The EEO-1 compensation data appeal: What we know now

Get answers to your EEO-1 comp data questions!

No more EEO-1 comp data, EEOC proposes