By Terry Loerch
WASHINGTON — Federal contractors will no longer be required to work toward a disability hiring goal, invite applicants to identify as disabled, or analyze how many disabled people apply and are hired under a Labor Department rule taking effect Sept. 21.
The final rule, published Aug. 21 in the Federal Register, removes three central provisions of a 2013 regulation governing disability hiring among federal contractors.
The regulation established a 7% utilization goal for workers with disabilities within each job group. It also required contractors to invite applicants and employees to voluntarily identify as disabled and to analyze the resulting hiring data.
The reach is substantial. According to the Labor Department, federal contractors employ approximately one-fifth of the U.S. workforce.
Disability advocates say eliminating those requirements will make it far more difficult to determine whether major federal employers are hiring disabled workers or whether their affirmative-action programs are producing results.
Charles-Edouard Catherine, vice president of corporate and government relations at the National Organization on Disability, called the decision “another very concerning sign” for a community that spent four decades building employment protections. He told Disability Scoop that the change would result in fewer opportunities for people with disabilities.
The Labor Department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs offers two main justifications for the decision.
The first involves the Americans with Disabilities Act. The ADA generally prohibits employers from asking applicants whether they have a disability before making a job offer. OFCCP argues that describing an applicant’s response as voluntary does not change the fact that the employer asked the question.
That position conflicts with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s longstanding guidance.
The EEOC, which holds primary responsibility for interpreting and enforcing the ADA’s employment provisions, has maintained since 1995 that employers may invite applicants to voluntarily identify as disabled when the information is collected for affirmative-action purposes.
When OFCCP developed the 2013 regulation, it asked the EEOC’s Office of Legal Counsel to review the disclosure requirement. In an Aug. 8, 2013, letter, the office concluded that the invitation did not violate the ADA.
The Labor Department now dismisses that letter as the opinion of a single agency attorney rather than a decision by the full Commission. It also argues that conflicting EEOC guidance would likely fail if challenged in court.
No reported court decision has found that a voluntary affirmative-action disclosure request violates the ADA. The federal government also uses Form SF-256 to invite its own employees to voluntarily identify as disabled.
OFCCP’s second justification concerns the possibility that the utilization goal encouraged contractors to treat it like a quota.
The 2013 regulation explicitly stated that the 7% figure was not a quota and that failing to reach it was not, by itself, a violation. The agency now argues that contractors may still have felt pressured to engage in quota-like behavior.
OFCCP also contends that the system became difficult to administer after President Trump revoked Executive Order 11246 in January 2025. Disability utilization analyses were tied to job groups established under that order.
The 7% goal was originally based on Census and American Community Survey estimates of the disabled share of the civilian labor force. It was finalized in September 2013 under Labor Secretary Thomas Perez, while Patricia Shiu led OFCCP, and took effect the following March.
Sen. Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat who was the chief Senate sponsor of the ADA, described the utilization figure as a critical employment goal when it was introduced.
The new rule does not eliminate Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act or all of the obligations imposed on federal contractors.
Contractors with at least 50 employees and a covered federal contract must continue maintaining written affirmative-action programs. They must conduct disability outreach and recruitment and evaluate whether those efforts are effective. Requirements involving reasonable accommodations and the prohibition against disability discrimination also remain unchanged.
Separate self-identification and job-listing requirements for protected veterans remain in place under another rule issued the same day.
Contractors may voluntarily conduct their own disability utilization analyses. However, management-side law firms, including Seyfarth Shaw, and the consulting firm DCI have warned that employers seeking disability information without a separate, ADA-defensible reason must now rely on their own legal judgment.
That uncertainty may discourage employers from collecting the information even when they want to continue monitoring disability hiring.
The enforcement agency overseeing the remaining requirements is also being dramatically reduced.
An internal OFCCP memorandum dated Feb. 25, 2025, first reported by The Washington Post, outlined a plan to consolidate the agency from 55 offices to four and reduce its workforce from 479 employees to 50. Federal budget proposals have also sought to eliminate the office and transfer its remaining responsibilities elsewhere in the government.
OFCCP has had three directors since early 2025. Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer resigned in April during an inspector general investigation. Deputy Secretary Keith Sonderling, a former EEOC commissioner, is serving as acting secretary.
Opposition to the regulatory change began shortly after OFCCP published its proposal on July 1, 2025.
The agency extended the public-comment period through mid-September and received 651 submissions. Disability organizations filed extensive objections, but the final regulation remained largely consistent with the original proposal.
Maria Town, president and chief executive of the American Association of People with Disabilities, called the ADA justification “especially insulting.” She argued that the contractor requirements were designed to strengthen the ADA, not conflict with it.
Nine senators, including Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware and Patty Murray of Washington, wrote to Chavez-DeRemer in September 2025 opposing the proposal. The American Bar Association’s Commission on Disability Rights warned that it would reverse more than a decade of progress.
The decision arrives amid a persistent disability employment gap.
In 2025, 22.8% of people with disabilities were employed, compared with 65.2% of people without disabilities, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics figures released in March. Approximately three-quarters of disabled adults were outside the labor force entirely.
The unemployment rate among disabled workers increased by eight-tenths of a percentage point during the year, reaching 8.3%.
Long-term employment figures had been improving. The percentage of disabled people with jobs increased from 17.6% in 2013 to 22.5% in 2023, the highest level recorded since the government began tracking the figure in 2008.
It is difficult to determine how much of that improvement resulted from the contractor regulation. The gains occurred alongside a tight labor market and the rapid expansion of remote work, both of which may have contributed to increased employment among disabled people.
There is evidence, however, that the regulation changed employer behavior.
A 2017 Cornell University survey found that approximately nine in ten contractors were using self-identification data to track their progress. The Labor Department also disclosed that it issued more than 75 violations beginning in fiscal year 2020 to contractors that failed to complete the required utilization analysis.
No legal challenge to the final rule had been filed as of publication.
Beginning Sept. 21, federal contractors will still be required to pursue affirmative action for people with disabilities. The government, however, will no longer have a uniform benchmark for determining whether those efforts are working.
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