Last week Mr. Trump signed the “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity” executive order, repealing Executive Order 11246 from 1965, which mandated equal employment opportunities and prohibited discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin for federal contractors.
Executive Order 11246, As Amended | U.S. Department of Labor
The revocation of EO 11246 will be damaging to fairness & workplace equality. For the last 60 years this order has improved diversity and prevented some discriminatory practices in the federal government and federal contractors.
Its repeal green lights discrimination in hiring practices, allowing biases to influence employment decisions and potentially marginalizing qualified individuals from underrepresented groups (damaging the social determinants of health and health equity).
The Order even tells the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs to stop promoting diversity and holding contractors accountable for affirmative action – a move to extinguish initiative-taking measures that have addressed systemic inequalities in the workplace.