Affirmative Action Plan: Who Still Needs One
Executive Order 11246 is revoked, but Section 503 and VEVRAA plans still bind federal contractors. Who needs a written plan and what goes in it.
If the last article you read on this explained job group analyses, availability analyses, and placement goals, it was written before January 2025 and nobody updated it. The rule behind all of that was revoked, and a great many guides and plan templates have carried on as though it were still there.
The correction is narrower than the noise suggests. One presidential order went away. Two acts of Congress did not, and those two carry their own written plan obligations, thresholds, and audit exposure. A contractor that concluded in early 2025 that affirmative action planning was finished made a mistake that is still sitting in its files. I tell other founders to start with the contract, because coverage is decided there.
The two surviving programs have since been trimmed by rule rather than by order. Final rules effective 21 September 2026 took the 7 percent utilization goal, the self-identification invitations, and the data analysis out of the disability program and left the core of the veterans program in place, so anything written since the revocation is already half a step behind.
This covers what was revoked, what survived and why, which contractors still have to write a plan, what goes in the two surviving programs, and what a small business with no federal contract needs to do, which is usually nothing. I build the people and records tooling for businesses without an HR department at FirstHR. This is general information rather than legal advice, and the position has changed recently and may change again.
What an Affirmative Action Plan Actually Is
An affirmative action plan is a written compliance document that a covered federal contractor prepares for each establishment, updates every year, and hands to a federal investigator on request. It sets out how the contractor will recruit, hire, and advance people in a specified protected group and, where the rules still require a count, what it measured and what it found.
Three features matter more than the rest. It is written, so an intention never typed up is not a plan. It is annual, so it goes stale on a schedule. And it is producible on demand, so only the version that exists on the day the request arrives counts. What it is not, and never was, is a hiring quota.
What Was Revoked, and What That Left Behind
Executive Order 11246 was revoked outright on 21 January 2025 by Executive Order 14173, which also gave contractors a 90 day window to carry on complying with the old regulatory scheme if they chose (Federal Register). That order, signed in 1965, produced the affirmative action plan most people picture when they hear the phrase.
The agency response was quick. The acting Secretary of Labor ordered the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs to stop enforcing the order on 24 January 2025, and contractors were told to wind down by 21 April 2025. For a year and a half after that the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) still printed rules implementing an order that no longer existed.
That gap has now closed. A final rule published on 21 August 2026 removed and reserved 41 CFR parts 60-1, 60-2, 60-3, 60-4, 60-20, 60-40, 60-50, and 60-999 effective 26 October 2026, and rewrote the administrative procedures at part 60-30.
| Case | Status | Why |
|---|---|---|
The Executive Order 11246 plan | Gone | The written plan covering race, color, religion, sex, and national origin, with its job group analysis, availability analysis, and placement goals, came from a presidential order rather than from Congress. Revoking the order removed it. |
The Section 503 program for individuals with disabilities | Still in force, narrower | Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act is a statute. It was never part of the revoked order, its regulations at 41 CFR part 60-741 survive, and covered contractors still write and update a program every year. |
The VEVRAA program for protected veterans | Still in force | The Vietnam Era Veterans’ Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA) is also an act of Congress, with regulations at 41 CFR part 60-300. Covered contractors still set a hiring benchmark, list openings with the state employment service, and file an annual report. |
The measurement half of the disability program | Gone as of 21 September 2026 | A final rule published 21 August 2026 and effective 21 September 2026 removed the 7 percent utilization goal at 41 CFR 60-741.45, the invitations to self-identify at 60-741.42, and the disability data collection analysis at 60-741.44(k). The veterans equivalents were untouched. |
Two more final rules came out on 21 August 2026, and they are the ones a covered contractor has to act on. Both took effect on 21 September 2026. One strips the measurement half out of the Section 503 rules; the other aligns the veterans rules with the revocation and updates their dollar thresholds.
One further change is less settled than most write-ups suggest. The rule requiring federal contractors with 50 or more employees to file the annual workforce demographic report sat in part 60-1, so it was rescinded with that part on 26 October 2026, and the Department of Labor stated plainly that it has no further use for that data.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission runs its own collection under Title VII. It proposed in July 2026 to drop the report altogether, has not finalized that, and still lists federal contractors at 50 employees among its filers. Check the instructions the commission issues for the filing year rather than assuming the threshold moved to 100 for everybody.
And federal contracting has acquired an obligation running the other way. Executive Order 14398, signed on 26 March 2026, requires agencies to insert a clause under which contractors undertake not to engage in racially discriminatory diversity activities.
Those activities are defined as disparate treatment based on race or ethnicity in recruitment, employment, contracting, program participation, or the allocation of resources. A contractor now certifies about the absence of one thing while still writing plans for two others.
Who Is Required to Have a Written Plan Now
Only federal contractors and subcontractors that meet the size and contract value thresholds under Section 503 or under the veterans statute are required to have a written plan. No category of employer is now required to write an affirmative action plan addressing race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.
| Section 503 (disability) | VEVRAA (protected veterans) | |
|---|---|---|
| Source of the obligation | A statute passed by Congress | A statute passed by Congress |
| Basic coverage threshold | Contract in excess of $20,000 | Contract of $200,000 or more |
| Written plan threshold | 50 employees and a contract of $50,000 or more | 50 employees and a contract of $200,000 or more |
| First plan due | Within 120 days of the contract starting | Within 120 days of the contract starting |
| Update cycle | Reviewed and updated annually | Reviewed and updated annually |
| The measurement | None since 21 September 2026 | A hiring benchmark you set and document |
| Separate federal filing | None | An annual report on veteran employment |
Both basic coverage thresholds moved on 1 October 2025, the disability one from $15,000 to $20,000 and the veterans one from $150,000 to $200,000, under the periodic inflation adjustment the Federal Acquisition Regulation Council applies across government contracting. The written plan threshold for the disability program stayed at 50 employees and a $50,000 contract.
For a year those adjusted figures were binding without appearing in the rules, which produced a lot of wrong answers. The August 2026 rulemaking wrote them into 41 CFR part 60-741 and into part 60-300, so the printed thresholds and the operative ones now agree.
One trap survives. Subcontractors are covered on the same terms as prime contractors, and a business that never bid for federal work can be pulled in by one flow-down clause from a customer who did.
Because coverage turns on a contract rather than on anything in your HR file, write down how you reached the answer at the time you reached it. If an agency letter arrives two years later, the useful document is the one showing which contract you read, which headcount you used, and what you concluded.
A Voluntary Diversity Effort Is Not an Affirmative Action Plan
These are two different things governed by two different bodies of law, and collapsing the distinction is causing employers real trouble. A required plan is a regulatory document owed to a federal agency by a contractor. A voluntary diversity effort is a business decision owed to nobody, constrained by ordinary non-discrimination law.
The constraint is the part people miss. Title VII prohibits treating an individual differently because of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, and it prohibits it in both directions.
A program that widens the pool, advertises in more places, or trains interviewers to score consistently is lawful and always has been. One that reserves a slot or lets a protected characteristic decide between two candidates is a different animal.
The shelter voluntary programs relied on has also been withdrawn. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission rescinded the guidelines on affirmative action appropriate under Title VII at 29 CFR part 1608, which had stood since 1979, with effect from 6 July 2026 (Federal Register).
The statute itself is unchanged. What changed is that the agency will no longer tell you a voluntary program was appropriate. None of that touches the useful work, which is auditing requirements nobody can justify and scoring every candidate the same way.
The Disability Program: What Goes In It
A Section 503 program is a written document covering qualified individuals with disabilities, prepared within 120 days of the contract commencing, kept at each establishment, and updated every year by a named official. Its contents are prescribed rather than optional.
What the program no longer contains is the part most guides still describe. Until 21 September 2026 it carried an invitation to self-identify before the offer, again after the offer, and by survey every five years, plus an annual count of applicants and hires and a yearly check of the workforce against a 7 percent goal.
The rule removed and reserved the invitations, the count, and the goal alike, and the prescribed federal form went with them.
What survives on the disability side is the outreach and recruitment duty, and it is now the heaviest item in the document. A contractor still names the external sources it uses and reviews them in writing once a year, deciding for each whether it worked and switching to alternatives listed in the regulation when the totality of the effort did not.
The rule added one clarification worth reading twice: a contractor is not required to consider quantitative data on referrals, applicants, or hires of individuals with disabilities when judging that effectiveness. Outreach is now assessed on what you did and what came back qualitatively, not on a percentage.
Self-identification responses gathered before the change stay confidential, and the old rule had them kept in a data analysis file rather than in medical files.
The other pillar is the reasonable accommodation procedure, which overlaps almost entirely with what the Americans with Disabilities Act already requires at 15 or more employees. If you run a proper interactive process, the plan documents what you already do. If you do not, the plan is where the gap becomes visible.
The Veterans Program: What Is Different About It
The veterans program shares the same skeleton and is now the larger of the two, because it kept everything the disability rules shed in September 2026. Two of its duties have no counterpart on the disability side at all, and both are operational rather than documentary.
| Obligation | Disability program | Veterans program |
|---|---|---|
| Self-identification invitations | Removed 21 September 2026 | Pre-offer and post-offer |
| Job listing with the state employment service | Not required | Required for almost every opening |
| Annual measurement | Removed 21 September 2026 | A hiring benchmark you set |
| Data collection analysis | Removed 21 September 2026 | Required, kept three years |
| Outreach effectiveness assessment | Required, written, annual | Required, written, annual |
| Separate federal report | None | Filed once a year, 1 August to 30 September |
The job listing duty is the one that catches people. A covered contractor must list openings with the appropriate state employment service delivery system, and the exceptions are narrow: executive and senior management roles, positions filled internally, and positions lasting three days or fewer.
Job listing is a workflow change rather than a policy, and it belongs inside your recruitment process, because an opening that closed without being listed cannot be fixed retrospectively.
The second duty is the annual veterans employment report, a separate federal filing rather than part of the plan. It is due by 30 September each year, the filing platform opens on 1 August, and it applies at the same $200,000 threshold. The Department of Labor sends no reminders, so it belongs on your own compliance calendar.
Utilization Goals and Hiring Benchmarks Are Not Quotas
One surviving program requires a number and it does not require you to reach it. The veterans benchmark is the last quantitative obligation standing, and the difference between measuring against a benchmark and being held to a target is the most misunderstood feature of this regime.
The disability side no longer has a number. The nationwide 7 percent utilization goal, which a contractor applied to each job group or to its whole workforce at 100 or fewer employees, was removed and reserved on 21 September 2026 along with the count that fed it. Nothing replaced it, so there is no disability percentage to compute, hit, or explain missing.
On the veterans side the published figure is a starting point rather than a target. A contractor sets a benchmark annually, and the simple route is to adopt the national percentage of veterans in the civilian labor force published by the agency, which has stood at 5.1 percent since 30 July 2025.
The alternative is to build your own benchmark from five specified data points covering state level veteran representation, veterans using state employment services, your own applicant and hire ratios, the effectiveness of your outreach, and anything else that shapes availability, such as the kind of openings you have or where you are.
Whichever route a contractor takes, the choice and its reasoning are documented and kept three years (41 CFR 60-300.45).
Recordkeeping, Reporting, and What a Review Looks At
Records under the disability regulations are kept two years from the making of the record or the personnel action, whichever is later, dropping to one year for a contractor with fewer than 150 employees or no contract of at least $150,000. The veterans rules run the same way with the second test at $200,000.
Three-year retention is narrower than it used to be. It now covers the outreach records under both programs, and under the veterans program also the applicant and hire analysis and the benchmark documentation. Once a complaint or a compliance evaluation begins, the clock stops applying and the relevant records are preserved until the matter resolves.
The production deadlines are short. A plan must be submitted within 30 days of an agency request and made promptly available on site if asked. Thirty days is enough time to send a document and nowhere near enough to write one, which is the practical reason the annual update matters more than it looks.
On enforcement posture the honest answer is that it is in flux. The administration proposed eliminating the enforcement office for the 2026 fiscal year, Congress funded it instead, and its authority over both statutes survived. None of that changes the obligation, which comes from the statutes rather than from the office enforcing them.
Kelly KapoorCustomer ServiceUp to Date
Darryl PhilbinWarehouseNeeds Attention
Ryan HowardSalesUp to DateAffirmative Action Reporting Requirements
The affirmative action reporting requirements for a covered contractor come down to three things: one recurring filing tied to the programs, one demographic filing that has nothing to do with them, and a production duty that arrives without notice. The plan itself is never filed on a schedule, which is the part most owners have backwards.
The recurring filing is the annual veterans employment report, due by 30 September with the filing cycle open from 1 August. It applies at the $200,000 contract value with no employee minimum at all, so a five-person contractor can owe the report without ever owing a written program.
The demographic filing is the annual workforce demographic report, owed by any employer at 100 or more employees whether or not it holds a federal contract. Federal contractors at 50 employees also remain among the filers the commission lists on its data collection page, even though the part 60-1 rule behind that line was rescinded on 26 October 2026.
The third item is the production duty described earlier: a plan handed over within 30 days of a request, with no notice and no filing date to plan around.
An OFCCP Audit Checklist
An OFCCP audit, meaning a compliance evaluation run by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, comes in four forms: a full compliance review, an off-site review of records, a compliance check, and a focused review (41 CFR 60-741.60 and 60-300.60).
The compliance review is the heavy one, and it runs in three stages: a desk audit of the written program, an on-site review to check that it was implemented, and further off-site analysis where that is needed.
The desk audit is the stage you can prepare for completely, because it runs on documents you send in. The checklist below lists those documents, and the right-hand column shows where small contractors are usually short.
| What gets requested | Where it comes from | The usual gap |
|---|---|---|
| The written program, signed and dated | The current plan year, one document per establishment | A plan carried forward with last year’s snapshot date still in it |
| The workforce snapshot behind it | The headcount frozen on the first day of the plan year | Two different dates used in two different calculations |
| Applicant, hire, and self-identification counts | The veterans data collection analysis, kept three years | Numbers that sit in a payroll export but were never analyzed |
| Outreach sources and the written effectiveness assessment | The annual assessment of each source you actually used | Sources listed with no record of what any of them produced |
| The veterans benchmark and how it was set | The benchmark, plus the reasoning behind it | A number adopted with nothing written about why |
| Job listing records for openings | State employment service listings under the veterans program | Openings that closed without ever being listed |
| Accommodation and harassment procedures, and training records | The procedures named in the plan, and who was trained and when | Procedures nobody making hiring decisions has seen |
Two habits make those 30 days survivable. Keep each plan year together with the numbers behind it rather than scattered across folders, and date the outreach assessment on the day you do it. An assessment put together after the letter arrives reads that way, and the dates on the file confirm it.
How to Actually Put One Together
A first plan for a small contractor is a week of work, not a quarter, and most of that week goes on assembling numbers you already have rather than on writing prose.
Two of those steps produce the records a review actually asks for, and both are usually the ones missing. The outreach assessment has to say what each source produced and what you decided about it, and the veterans data collection analysis has to show the applicant and hire counts you measured against the benchmark.
Treat both as logs: rows you add to during the year rather than prose you write in the last week.
| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Outreach source | Program it serves (disability / veterans / both) | Contact and date engaged | What we asked them to do | Referrals received | Applicants attributed | Hires attributed | Did it produce anything? (Y/N) | Continue, drop, or replace | Reason recorded | Assessed by | Date assessed |
| 2 | Example: state employment service delivery system | Veterans | ||||||||||
| 3 | Example: local vocational rehabilitation agency | Disability | ||||||||||
| 4 | ||||||||||||
| 5 | ||||||||||||
| 6 | ||||||||||||
| 7 | ||||||||||||
| 8 | ||||||||||||
| 9 |
What a Current Affirmative Action Plan Template Contains
A usable affirmative action plan template now covers two programs rather than three, and its sections are the ones the disability and veterans regulations still prescribe. The outline below sets them out in order. Strike the job group analysis, the availability analysis, and the placement goals wherever a downloaded version carries them, and strike the disability utilization analysis alongside.
The outline is a container rather than the work. Every line in it is answered by something produced elsewhere: the coverage record above, the outreach log, and the quarterly count. Fill it in from those, and there is very little left to write.
The element worth taking seriously is the audit and reporting system, because it turns a document into a program. It does not need software. It needs somebody to look at applicant and hire counts once a quarter and record what was done about them. Keeping those records somewhere they survive a laptop change is the part FirstHR is built to carry.
If You Are Not a Federal Contractor, You Need None of This
A private business holding no federal contract and no federal subcontract has no obligation to write an affirmative action plan, has never had one, and does not acquire one by growing. The requirement has always been a condition of federal contracting rather than a general employment law duty.
What does apply is ordinary non-discrimination, and the coverage thresholds are worth knowing precisely because they are lower than most owners assume.
| Obligation | Federal threshold | What it actually requires |
|---|---|---|
| Race, color, religion, sex, national origin | 15 employees | Do not treat people differently on those grounds, and do not retaliate |
| Disability discrimination and accommodation | 15 employees | Non-discrimination plus an interactive accommodation process |
| Age discrimination | 20 employees | Protection from age 40 upward |
| Annual workforce demographic report | 100 employees | A filing, not a plan, and no goals attach to it |
| State discrimination law | Often 1 to 5 employees | Frequently broader grounds and no damages cap |
| Written affirmative action plan | Federal contractors only | Nothing, unless a contract clause brings you in |
Two edge cases are worth a look before you file this away. State and local government contracts sometimes carry their own equal opportunity conditions, a separate regime with its own thresholds. And a court can impose a remedial plan when resolving a discrimination case, which is the one route by which an ordinary employer ends up with something resembling a plan.
For everyone else the useful work is the unglamorous kind. Write the job requirements before you advertise, ask the same questions in the same order, score against criteria fixed in advance, and keep the notes.
Then review any neutral rule that screens out a group without a job related reason. That is where disparate impact exposure lives, and it does not require anybody to have intended anything.
Where Employers Are Getting This Wrong Right Now
Six patterns, and four of them are new since the revocation.
Concluding that affirmative action planning ended in January 2025 is first and by far the most common. It ended for one of three programs, and a contractor who filed the whole thing away has stopped updating two plans an agency can demand within 30 days.
Using a downloaded template without checking its vintage is second. Templates written before 2025 describe the revoked regime, and those revised during 2025 still ask for a disability utilization analysis that no longer exists.
Computing a 7 percent disability utilization figure out of habit is third. The section it came from was removed and reserved, the count behind it went too, and the hours spent on it now buy nothing at all.
Assuming that being a subcontractor is a defense is fourth. Coverage flows down, and the moment to read the clause is before signing rather than after an agency letter arrives.
Treating a diversity initiative as though it discharges a compliance obligation is fifth. It discharges nothing, and since the withdrawal of the old voluntary guidelines it carries more risk than it used to rather than less.
And chasing the number instead of the record is last. A plan that meets its benchmark with no outreach assessment, no applicant and hire computation, and no audit system fails a review. A plan that misses its benchmark with all of that intact does not.
Nick Anisimov, FirstHR founderYour next step depends on one question: do you hold or bid on federal work? If so, write down your coverage determination now: which contract, which headcount, and which of the two programs applies. If not, ordinary non-discrimination compliance is all that applies to you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is an affirmative action plan still required?
For most employers no, and for a narrow group yes. The broad requirement that federal contractors write a plan addressing race, color, religion, sex, and national origin came from Executive Order 11246, which Executive Order 14173 revoked on 21 January 2025. What survived is statutory rather than presidential. Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act requires a program for qualified individuals with disabilities, and the Vietnam Era Veterans’ Readjustment Assistance Act requires one for protected veterans. Both are acts of Congress, neither was part of the revoked order, and both keep their regulations, though the disability rules lost their utilization goal, self-identification invitations, and data analysis on 21 September 2026. A contractor meeting the thresholds still writes plans, just two narrower ones instead of three. A private employer with no federal contract has no written plan obligation at all.
What actually happened to Executive Order 11246?
It was revoked outright. On 21 January 2025, Executive Order 14173 ended Executive Order 11246, which dated from 24 September 1965, though it let contractors keep following the old scheme for 90 more days if they preferred. Three days later the acting Secretary of Labor told the enforcement agency to stop enforcing the order, and contractors were to finish winding down by 21 April 2025. The regulations took longer to go. A final rule published on 21 August 2026 removed eight parts of 41 CFR (60-1, 60-2, 60-3, 60-4, 60-20, 60-40, 60-50, and 60-999), and the removal took effect on 26 October 2026. Placement goals, the job group analysis, and the availability analysis are therefore no longer obligations.
Who has to write a Section 503 affirmative action program?
A federal contractor or subcontractor with 50 or more employees that holds a single contract of $50,000 or more. Below that, a smaller contract still brings non-discrimination and affirmative action duties under the statute, but not the written program. Basic coverage now starts at a contract in excess of $20,000, up from $15,000 after the Federal Acquisition Regulation Council’s inflation adjustment of 1 October 2025, which a final rule effective 21 September 2026 wrote into 41 CFR part 60-741. The first program is due within 120 days of the contract starting, is updated every year, and must reach the agency within 30 days of a request.
What is the seven percent utilization goal?
It was the nationwide goal for employing qualified individuals with disabilities, set out at 41 CFR 60-741.45, and it no longer exists. The final rule published on 21 August 2026 deleted that section as of 21 September 2026, along with the self-identification invitations and the disability data collection analysis. While the goal stood, a covered contractor applied it to each job group, or to the whole workforce at 100 or fewer employees, and evaluated it annually. It was never a quota. If a template or a consultant still asks you to compute disability utilization against 7 percent, the document predates the change.
What is the veterans hiring benchmark and do I have to hit it?
No, you have to set one and document it. Under 41 CFR 60-300.45 a covered contractor establishes a hiring benchmark annually by one of two methods, and that section came through the August 2026 rulemaking untouched. One method is to adopt the percentage of veterans in the national civilian labor force that the enforcement agency publishes, currently 5.1 percent and in place since 30 July 2025. The other is to calculate your own from five specified factors: veteran representation in your state, how many veterans use state employment services, your own applicant and hire ratios, how well your outreach performed, and other influences such as job type and location. Whichever you choose, record the choice and keep it three years.
Does a small business with no federal contract need a plan?
No. There is no general obligation on a private employer to write an affirmative action plan, and there never has been. The requirement has always attached to federal contracting, and it now attaches only to the disability and veterans programs at their thresholds. What applies to an ordinary small business is straightforward non-discrimination. Federal law reaches you at 15 employees for race, color, religion, sex, national origin, and disability, and at 20 for age, while many state statutes start lower and some from the first employee. Two exceptions deserve a look: a contract with a state or local government may bring its own equal opportunity terms, and a court can order a remedial plan to resolve a discrimination case.
Is a diversity program the same as an affirmative action plan?
No, and treating them as interchangeable is the most expensive confusion in this area right now. A plan the regulations require comes with prescribed contents, an annual update, retention rules, and an agency that can demand it within 30 days. A diversity program an employer starts on its own is a business choice, and ordinary non-discrimination law applies to it: an employer may not treat individuals differently because of a protected characteristic in order to change the makeup of its workforce. Voluntary programs also lost their old safe harbor, because the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission rescinded its Title VII affirmative action guidelines at 29 CFR part 1608 effective 6 July 2026. Outreach that widens a pool remains lawful. Selection that turns on a protected characteristic does not.
How long do affirmative action plan records have to be kept?
Under the disability regulations the default is two years, counted from the date a record was made or the personnel action was taken, whichever is later. The period falls to one year for a contractor with fewer than 150 employees or without a contract of at least $150,000, and the veterans rules work the same way, with $200,000 as the second figure since 21 September 2026. Some records need three years: the outreach records under both programs and, on the veterans side, the applicant and hire analysis and the benchmark documentation. A complaint or a compliance evaluation suspends the clock, and the records stay until the matter resolves. In practice, keep each annual plan with its supporting computations for three years.
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