For decades, the federal government has required large employers to count their employees by race, ethnicity and sex and report the results to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The premise sounds sensible: If government wants to detect discrimination, demographic data can help identify it.

But Kenneth Marcus, founder, chairman and CEO of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, makes a persuasive case for the EEOC’s proposal to end that requirement. The problem is not simply paperwork. It is that a system intended to combat discrimination has encouraged employers to view an increasingly complicated American workforce through demographic categories that are rigid, incomplete and sometimes misleading.

Jewish employees provide a particularly revealing example. Where exactly do Jews fit in the contemporary diversity ledger? Some are white, Black, Hispanic, Middle Eastern or Asian. Judaism is a religion, but Jewish identity can also be ethnic, cultural and ancestral. When employers reduce their workforce to government-prescribed demographic boxes, Jewish identity largely disappears. Antisemitism, unfortunately, does not.

Jewish employees may encounter hostility because they are Jewish, wear religious symbols, support Israel or are simply presumed to hold particular political views because of their identity. Yet they can become virtually invisible in a diversity system supposedly designed to identify discrimination. That does not mean they are invisible to the law. And that distinction is critical.

Title VII explicitly prohibits employment discrimination based on religion as well as race, color, sex and national origin. EEOC guidance also recognizes discrimination and harassment based on religious and ethnic affiliation. Eliminating routine demographic reporting would eliminate none of those protections. Nor would it prevent the EEOC from investigating complaints and obtaining relevant employment records when discrimination is suspected.

Marcus’ larger point is therefore worth considering. Once demographic classifications become embedded in employment policy, they can migrate from statistical tools into ways of thinking about people. Employers measure representation, compare outcomes and design diversity initiatives around the categories government tells them to count. Individuals risk becoming representatives of demographic groups rather than employees entitled to equal treatment.

Critics reasonably argue that demographic data can reveal patterns that individual complaints might miss. That concern deserves consideration. But collecting demographic information should not become an end in itself. The EEOC estimates that its reporting system costs employers nearly $275 million annually, while requiring reports regardless of whether there has been any allegation of discrimination.

There is a fundamental difference between vigorously enforcing civil rights laws and continuously sorting millions of Americans into government-defined categories. The Jewish experience exposes the weakness because Jewish identity fits so awkwardly into the prevailing framework. But the principle extends far beyond Jews. Americans increasingly possess complicated racial, ethnic, religious and cultural identities that cannot be captured neatly by a handful of boxes.

Government should aggressively punish discrimination wherever it occurs. Employees who are harassed, excluded or denied opportunities because of who they are deserve protection. But protecting people from discrimination and classifying them by demographic identity are not the same thing.

Perhaps after decades of counting Americans by categories, it is time to concentrate again on protecting them as individuals.