Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, WHITE HOUSE NEWS—Oval Office revokes Executive Order 11246, takes aim at private sector DEI, (Jan 22, 2025)
Organizations Mentioned:Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs
By Brandi O. Brown, J.D.
Adding to Monday’s DEI-related announcements, President Trump has now directed the OFCCP to cease “[p]romoting ‘diversity’” and allowing or encouraging other “workforce balancing.”
In another directive, issued Tuesday, President Trump took another swipe at “[i]llegal DEI and DEIA policies.” Stating that it is “the policy of the United States to protect the civil rights of all Americans and to promote individual initiative, excellence, and hard work” he ordered executive departments and agencies to “terminate all discriminatory and illegal preferences, mandates, policies, programs, activities, guidance, regulations, enforcement actions, consent orders, and requirements.”
He also ordered “all agencies to enforce our longstanding civil-rights laws and to combat illegal private-sector DEI preferences, mandates, policies, programs, and activities.”
EO 11246. The order revokes executive orders going back to 1965 relating to equal employment opportunity and promotion of diversity. Specifically, and most profoundly, it revokes Executive Order 11246 of September 24, 1965 (Equal Employment Opportunity), allowing 90 days in which federal contractors may continue to comply with the regulatory scheme in effect on January 20, 2025.
In addition to revocation of EO 11246, as part of the process of streamlining the federal contracting process, the order requires the following actions by the OFCCP:
“(ii) The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs within the Department of Labor shall immediately cease:
Promoting “diversity”;
Holding federal contractors and subcontractors responsible for taking “affirmative action”; and
Allowing or encouraging federal contractors and subcontractors to engage in workforce balancing based on race, color, sex, sexual preference, religion, or national origin.”
It also requires actions by the head of each agency with regard to contracts and grant awards.
Private sector. Moreover, the directive delves into the private sector as well, including a section on “Encouraging the Private Sector to End Illegal DEI Discrimination and Preferences,” which requires agency heads, with the assistance of the Attorney General, to “take all appropriate action with respect to the operations of their agencies to advance in the private sector the policy of individual initiative, excellence, and hard work identified in section 2 of this order.”
It also requires those agency heads, the Attorney General, and the OMB Director to prepare and submit a report to the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy “containing recommendations for enforcing Federal civil-rights laws and taking other appropriate measures to encourage the private sector to end illegal discrimination and preferences, including DEI.”
Up to nine investigations. That report is to include a proposed strategic enforcement plan that identifies, among other things, “[t]he most egregious and discriminatory DEI practitioners in each sector of concern” and for each agency, as part of a “plan of specific steps or measures to deter DEI programs or principles” to identify “up to nine potential civil compliance investigations of publicly traded corporations, large non-profit corporations or associations, foundations with assets of 500 million dollars or more, State and local bar and medical associations, and institutions of higher education with endowments over 1 billion dollars.”
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