The affirmative action rules for federal contractors are removed and reserved on 26 October, and the selection guidelines they carried survive at a second citation

Start with the count. The Labor Department puts the number of employers carrying obligations under the Executive Order 11246 regulations at 107,165 supply and service entities and 9,982 construction contractors, between them employing about 32 million workers. Of those, roughly 111,832 entities met the thresholds that triggered a written affirmative action programme. Those obligations end on 26 October.

The final rule was filed for public inspection on Thursday morning and publishes on Friday. It does not create the change. Executive Order 14173 revoked Executive Order 11246 on 21 January 2025, and the Department's position is that the delegation of rulemaking authority in section 201 of the 1965 order died with it, leaving the regulations with no operative legal force. What Thursday's document does is take them off the books.

What is removed, and what is only revised

Parts 60-1, 60-2, 60-3, 60-4, 60-20, 60-40, 60-50 and 60-999 are each removed and reserved. Part 60-30, the rules of practice for administrative proceedings, is revised rather than removed, because it also governs proceedings under Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act and under the Vietnam Era Veterans' Readjustment Assistance Act. Those two programmes rest on statutes rather than on an executive order. They survive.

Two companion final rules were filed at the same minute to keep them working. One modifies the Section 503 regulations at 41 CFR part 60-741. The other modifies the VEVRAA regulations at part 60-300, strips out their cross references to the revoked Executive Order 11246 authority, and updates the jurisdictional thresholds that the Federal Acquisition Regulation Council adjusted for inflation on 1 October 2025.

The selection guidelines are the part to read carefully

Part 60-3 is the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures, the rules that require an employer whose test or screen produces an adverse impact to validate it and keep the validation documentation on file. They are removed and reserved with the rest.

That is not the whole picture, and the Department says so itself. The guidelines were adopted jointly by the Labor Department, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Civil Service Commission and the Justice Department, and they are codified twice, at 41 CFR part 60-3 and again at 29 CFR part 1607. The Department writes that it proposed to rescind part 60-3 solely to the extent it was codified in the Executive Order 11246 regulations, and that the action does not affect other agencies' interpretation and application of the guidelines, or their existence more broadly. The text survives at the other citation.

The money, and the part of it nobody counted

DOL received 917 comments on the proposal, after extending the window to 17 September 2025. It has kept the savings estimate it published with that proposal: annualised cost savings of $996.37m in 2024 dollars at a 7 percent discount rate, off an estimated reduction of 9,875,221 hours of recordkeeping, reporting and compliance work.

The final rule then says it believes the real figure is larger, and it is candid that the extra benefits are the ones it cannot count. Commenters put forward wider contractor participation, better competition in procurement and productivity gains, and the Department treats those as illustrative rather than quantified. The rule is designated a major rule.

The Department gives four reasons for finalising. That the revocation is by itself enough. That the affirmative action requirements conflict with equal protection principles and with Titles VI and VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That significant parts of the framework, including the administrative enforcement and monetary relief provisions, never had statutory authorisation. And that rescission will make federal contracting cheaper without producing more discrimination.

The two companion rules take effect 30 days after publication, with one amendment to part 60-30 at 120 days. The rescission itself carries a fixed date instead, 26 October.