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Business Group Files Suit against New Federal Contractor Disability Hiring Rule

12-31-13
Last month, Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) filed a request for an injunction against an Aug. 27 rule from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP). The OFCCP rule alters federal contractors’ existing affirmative action and nondiscrimination obligations for individuals with disabilities including sets hiring goals for disabled individuals.


Key Elements of the ABC court challenge include that Federal Contractor Affirmative Action Programs:



  • Have “measurable objectives, quantitative analyses, and internal auditing and reporting systems that measure the contractor’s progress toward achieving equal employment opportunity for individuals with disabilities.”

  • Have a mechanism for inviting job applicants to voluntarily disclose having a disability before a job is offered.

  • Review data collected to “assess trends related to the contractor’s (disability) outreach and recruitment efforts.”

  • Have a goal that 7 percent of the federal contractor's workforce be persons with disabilities.

"When it issued this rule, OFCCP exceeded its statutory authority, altered longstanding precedent, and imposed wasteful and burdensome data collection and reporting requirements on government contractors without any supporting evidence from the agency that contractors weren’t meeting the previous requirements,” said ABC Vice President of Federal Affairs Geoff Burr. 


OFCCP’s new rule revises existing procedures under Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act that require federal contractors and subcontractors to maintain affirmative action and nondiscrimination programs by drastically increasing the paperwork burdens, ABC asserts.


Read more about ABCs lawsuit. Read more about the new OFCCP rule.