Days after rescinding the affirmative-action rules tied to the revoked Executive Order 11246, the Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs finalized a companion rule eliminating the core disability-hiring framework for federal contractors under Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act. The rule, published August 21 in the Federal Register, removes the requirement that contractors invite applicants and employees to self-identify as disabled, ends the related data collection, and rescinds the 7 percent utilization goal that contractors have used since 2013 to benchmark disability representation in each job group.
OFCCP says the changes align its regulations with the Americans with Disabilities Act and two Trump executive orders, Executive Order 14173 and Executive Order 14219, and argues the disability self-identification structure was in tension with the ADA’s limits on medical inquiries. Most changes take effect September 21, 2026; removal of the separate Section 60-30 procedures follows in December. Contractors still must not discriminate against employees with disabilities and must keep assessing the effectiveness of their outreach, but the annual numeric benchmark that drove much of that effort is gone.
For HR and compliance teams, this is the second major deregulatory shift for federal contractors in a week, and it removes the two data points, self-identification rates and utilization-goal attainment, that HR tech vendors built entire affirmative-action-plan reporting modules around. Read our coverage of the EO 11246 rescission for the broader deregulatory context. The EEOC’s own internal split over ending EEO-1 pay-data reporting suggests federal collection of workplace demographic data is contracting across the board, not just at OFCCP, a trend compliance teams should track regardless of which agency moves next.
