Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity

The order revokes Executive Order 11246 (the 1965 order requiring federal contractors to take affirmative action), as well as EOs on environmental justice, federal-workforce diversity, and a 2016 national-security-workforce diversity memorandum. It directs all executive agencies to immediately terminate DEI programs, preferences, guidance, and mandates. The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) must immediately stop promoting diversity, enforcing affirmative action obligations, or allowing workforce balancing by race, sex, religion, or national origin. All future contracts and grant awards must include a clause making anti-discrimination compliance material to payment under the False Claims Act, and a certification that the recipient operates no DEI programs violating federal law. The Director of OMB must scrub DEI references from all acquisition, contracting, and financial-assistance guidance.

Within 120 days, the Attorney General must submit a strategic enforcement plan to the Domestic Policy Assistant identifying the most significant private-sector DEI practitioners, up to nine potential civil compliance investigations of major corporations, nonprofits, foundations, and universities, and litigation and regulatory options. The Attorney General and Secretary of Education must jointly issue guidance within 120 days to federally funded K-12 agencies and higher-education institutions on compliance with the Supreme Court's Students for Fair Admissions ruling. Federal contractors have a 90-day grace period to wind down from the prior regulatory scheme. The order exempts veterans' preferences, First Amendment speech, and academic instruction about DEI topics.

All federal agencies and their workforces, federal contractors and subcontractors of all sizes, recipients of federal grants and financial assistance, major corporations, large nonprofits and foundations, state and local bar and medical associations, institutions of higher education with large endowments, and K-12 school systems receiving federal funds.

Federal contractors that maintained affirmative action programs face new certification requirements on every contract, with False Claims Act exposure for noncompliance. University and K-12 DEI programs tied to federal funding must be reviewed for legality. Major corporations, foundations, and professional associations face the prospect of targeted federal civil compliance investigations.

The OFCCP changes are immediate; contractors get a 90-day wind-down window before the prior regulatory scheme expires. New contract and grant terms take effect for all future awards, creating a payment-materiality hook under the False Claims Act. OMB drives the government-wide scrub of acquisition guidance, coordinating with the AG. The AG's 120-day report feeds a strategic enforcement pipeline — sector identification leads to investigation targets, which feed potential litigation referrals and regulatory action. The order contains a standard severability clause and a general-provisions carve-out preserving existing statutory authority.