The Department of Labor building in Washington, DC.Samuel Corum/Sipa USA/AP
On Wednesday, a group of six Democratic members of Congress, led by Rep. Lateefah Simon (D-Calif.), raised concerns that the federal government is “failing to protect federal contractor workers with disabilities” in a letter sent to Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer.
“The Trump administration is waging a war on disabled people and working to undo the hard-won rights our elders secured,” Simon said in a statement. “They want to roll back protections, weaken enforcement, and make our communities invisible again.”
Under Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act, landmark disability rights legislation which has been in effect since 1973, the federal government is supposed to take proactive steps to hire contractors with disabilities, provide accommodations, and not discriminate against them. As I reported in July, Chavez-DeRemer’s Labor Department is in the process of rulemaking to end goals for companies with federal contracts to have at least seven percent of their employees have a disability.
“When you strip those…provisions away, what is left of [Section] 503, and what are they actually enforcing?” Anupa Iyer Geevarghese, a former deputy director of policy in the Labor Department’s Office of Federal Contractor Compliance Programs, asked in July. “Anything that gives you a strong basis for enforcement is sort of whittled away.”
According to the letter, “undue delays in investigating complaints of discrimination, abandonment of compliance reviews and stalled affirmative action plan monitoring call into question the agency’s commitment to enforcing protections for federal contract workers with disabilities.”
“The agency is abandoning review of employment practices for 2,000 companies,” the letter continues, including “technology companies such as Google and Meta, airlines such as American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and consulting firms including Deloitte and Boston Consulting Group,” also noting that the Labor Department, apparently throughout Trump’s second term, “was not processing and investigating complaints” for around six months.
The letter asks Chavez-DeRemer a series of questions, including how many disability discrimination complaints the office has received since January, how it has responded, and the impact of the delay on workers with disabilities. It requests a response by October 1—the first day of National Disability Employment Awareness Month.
