The Nondiscrimination Protections of Millions of Workers Are Under Threat

On August 15, 2019, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) in the U.S. Department of Labor published a proposed rule that seeks to significantly expand the number of federal contractors eligible for a religious exemption, including contractors far beyond those that courts have previously ruled qualify as a “religious corporation, association, educational institution, or society.”¹ Such a change would make millions of U.S. workers vulnerable to discrimination for not sharing their employers’ religious beliefs.²

This issue brief examines how the Trump administration’s proposed rule would weaken nondiscrimination protections available under executive order (EO) 13672. The brief begins by providing background information on the EO and exploring how the proposed rule would undermine it. It then explains why any loss of nondiscrimination protections disproportionately harms LGBTQ workers. Finally, the brief’s authors analyzed publicly available federal contracting data and found no evidence that EO 13672 has excluded faith-based organizations from contracting with the federal government.

How the proposed rule undermines EO 13627

Since 1965, EO 11246 has protected employees of federal contractors and subcontractors, as well as contractors who perform under federally assisted construction contracts, from discrimination on the basis of sex, race, color, religion, and national origin. In 2014, then-President Barack Obama issued EO 13672, which amended EO 11246 to include protections on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity and remains the largest LGBTQ-inclusive expansion of workplace protections in American history.³ According to the OFCCP’s own estimate, the protections of EO 11246 cover approximately one-fifth of all U.S. civilian employees.⁴ The OFCCP is charged with enforcing these nondiscrimination protections by both proactively conducting compliance evaluations and investigating the discrimination complaints it receives.⁵

View the complete September 3 article by Frank J. Bewkes and Caitlin Rooney on the Center for American Progress website here.