What You Need to Know About Executive Order 13672: Recap of OFCCP’s Webinars

On March 24^th and 25^th of this week, the OFCCP presented two webinars detailing a federal contractor’s obligations with regard to the LGBT regulations that are scheduled to become effective on April 8, 2015. Below you will find the highlights of the information provided:

Agenda of the webinar included:

• Compliance evaluations
• Definitions
• Complaint Investigations

Important dates to remember:

• 7/21/14 – EO 13672 signed
• 12/9/14 – Final Rule published
• 4/8/15 – Effective date

Effects of Executive Order 13672:

• Requirements affect every contract signed or modified after 4/8/15 – must then include gender identity and sexual orientation language
• Applies to contracts and subcontracts of > $10,000 after 4/8/15; if you have no new or modified contracts after that date, you do not have to go back and update current contracts with the new language, but you can if you so choose
• Wherever protected classes appear, i.e., race, gender, religion, sex, etc., new wording must be included; otherwise ‘EOE’ is sufficient

Changes With Which To Be Aware:

• EEO Clause – Sexual Orientation & Gender Identity must be included
• EEO Tagline – EOE is okay; if protected classes included (in paragraph form), must also include Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity; ‘LGBT’ is NOT okay to use
• EEO Is The Law Poster – to be updated with Supplement – OFCCP will notify contractors when available (and we will make it available on our website) – until then, current poster is still acceptable to use
• Visa Denial Reporting Requirements – Sexual Orientation & Gender Identity has been added to this list; contractors must report to the Department of State and the OFCCP if they feel an employee is denied a Visa due to Sexual Orientation or Gender Identity

What Has Not Changed:

• No new outreach or employment goals
• No self-identification requirement – you can collect this information, but it is not required; if you do collect it, the OFCCP can request it – but you cannot ask individuals to prove their Sexual Orientation or Gender Identity
• No data collection requirement
• No mandatory training
• No change to religious exemption

 What to Expect in a Compliance Evaluation:

• Scheduling Letter – No change
• Desk Audit
  • May request copies of Equal Opportunity clause in subcontracts and purchase orders
  • May look at job advertisement tag lines
• Onsite
  • Same as desk audit above plus:
    • OFCCP will want to see where EEO Is The Law poster is located
    • OFCCP will want to interview employees
• Off-site Analysis – No change

Definitions:

• Sexual Orientation – an individual’s physical, romantic, and/or emotional attraction to people of the same and/or opposite gender.  Examples of sexual orientations include straight (or heterosexual), lesbian, gay, and bisexual.
• Gender Identity – one’s internal sense of one’s own gender.  It may or may not correspond to the sex assigned to a person at birth, and may or may not be made visible to others.

Resources on OFCCP’s website:

• LGBT Resources
• Additional FAQ’s will be forthcoming