Attendees wait for the program to begin during the presentation of new Google hardware in San Francisco, California, U.S. October 4, 2016. REUTERS/Beck Diefenbach

(Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Labor said on Wednesday it filed a lawsuit against Alphabet Inc's GOOGL.O Google unit seeking access to the company's compensation data and documents as part of a routine compliance evaluation.

The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) said it had sought the data about the company’s equal opportunity program in September 2015. The company failed to submit despite many opportunities, the OFCCP said.

As a federal contractor, Google must agree to permit the federal government to inspect and copy records and information relevant to its compliance with the equal employment laws administered by OFCCP.

The company has provided hundreds of thousands of records over the last year to comply with the OFCCP’s current audit, a Google spokesperson told Reuters.

“However, the handful of OFCCP requests that are the subject of the complaint are overbroad in scope, or reveal confidential data, and we’ve made this clear to the OFCCP, to no avail,” the spokesperson said.

The OFCCP said it would ask the court to cancel all of Google’s current government contracts and to debar the company from entering into future contracts if it failed to comply.