Open Letter to Contractors in Response to OFCCP's Info Request
On Friday, June 27 th , Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) Director Catherine Eschbach sent a letter to federal contractors asking them to voluntarily submit information to the agency explaining their efforts to “wind down” compliance with Executive Order (EO) 11246 . Before I address the letter and my recommendation to our clients and the broader contractor community, it’s important to get some facts clear. First, with the revocation of EO 11246, the president removed OFCCP’s authority to conduct audits and enforce anything related to discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity and sex. Without EO 11246, OFCCP cannot point to any statute or executive order giving it such authority. To my knowledge, OFCCP was not issued authority to monitor and enforce EO 14173 . The bottom line is that OFCCP lacks any authority to audit, review, enforce, etc., anything related to non-compliance with Title VII or EO 14173. Second, Congress has proposed stripping all fu...