Story highlights The lack of disclosure came to light this week following Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine's request

The Senate Rules and Administration Committee is chaired by GOP Sen. Richard Shelby

(CNN) A key Senate committee on Thursday night publicly released data about workplace settlements reached and paid out in the Senate since 1997, totaling some two dozen cases amounting to $1.45 million.

The breakdown, which the Senate Rules and Administration Committee said was information provided by the Office of Compliance, included 13 settlements for claims involving Senate offices. They totaled close to $600,000 over a span of 20 years. The descriptions for the complaints included discrimination based on sex, age and disability, but there was no explicit mention of sexual harassment. There were also 10 additional settlements involving claims against non-member-led Senate offices, totaling $853,000.

The Office of Compliance has previously said it considers sexual harassment under the category of sex discrimination. In a letter to Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, responding to his request for additional information, the compliance office said, "Traditionally, the OOC has not separated allegations of sexual harassment from those involving sex-based disparate treatment or pregnancy discrimination."

"In fact, for many years, the Office simply classified all claims alleging discrimination of any kind as civil rights cases without any further differentiation," the agency said in the letter. "Thus, there are claims in our files that are classified in the category of 'civil rights' which may or may not contain an allegation of sex-based discrimination. Further, there are claims classified as sex discrimination which may not involve allegations of sexual harassment, such as claims of disparate treatment based on sex."

That means it is impossible to determine from the the data released Thursday night whether there were any sexual harassment settlements reached in the Senate, or how much those settlements would have totaled.

Read More