Trump’s DOL Civil Rights Office Plan Sparks Efficiency Concerns

The Trump administration’s proposal to consolidate the Labor Department’s remaining contractor antibias functions and some whistleblower enforcement under a new office risks efficiency and practicality issues for the agency, employers, and workers seeking remedies.

The White House fiscal year 2027 budget proposal allocates $35 million and 110 employees for the Office of Civil Rights to handle lingering Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs responsibilities and whistleblower investigations for complaints outside of the Occupational Safety and Health Act. The new office would also process internal equal employment opportunity complaints filed by DOL employees.

The shakeup aligns with President Donald Trump’s broader attempts to downsize and consolidate functions in federal agencies. He’s floated budget cuts and targeted DOL programs like Job Corps and the Women’s Bureau, while drastically cutting the OFCCP’s duties to policing contractors for bias against disabled workers and veterans only.

“This is an exercise in ‘boxology,’” said Richard Miller, a former labor policy director for Democrats on the House Education and Workforce Committee, of the proposed civil rights office. “Moving boxes around with cats and dogs, because OSHA wanted to offload non-OSHA cases and they don’t know what to do with what’s left over from OFCCP.”

DOL deferred comment to the Office of Management and Budget, which didn’t respond to a separate request.

Trump slashed the OFCCP’s ability to police federal contractors for race and sex bias by rescinding the executive order establishing those core powers last year, leaving it only with responsibility for Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act and the Vietnam Era Veterans’ Readjustment Act.

Those statutorily-established enforcement powers can’t be eliminated by presidential directive alone, but the labor secretary can transfer them elsewhere within the DOL.

Similarly, the whistleblower provisions in statutes outside of the OSH Act allow the secretary to grant them to other offices, labor attorneys said.

Division of Labor

There is some similarity in general subject matter with internal civil rights investigations and those conducted by OSHA’s whistleblower program, said Hema Steele, senior counsel at Conn Maciel Carey LLP.

“Potentially there are efficiencies and overlap, but practically speaking, why do it now?” she said.

“My hope is there will be a plan before all of this actually coalesces, so that on the back-end employers are not having this confusion of overlapping investigations, or the investigators themselves maybe being unclear about what their roles are,” Steele said.

Whistleblower complaints often allege violations of both OSH Act whistleblower provisions, as well as one or more non-OSH Act provision, raising questions about how the department will divide responsibilities to handle investigations involving more than one statute, Steele added.

OSHA’s whistleblower program enforces anti-retaliation provisions in two dozen statues outside Section 11(c) of the OSH Act, such as the Affordable Care Act, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the Consumer Financial Protection Act, and the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act.

The agency docketed 3,352 whistleblower complaints in 2025, an increase from the average of 3,027 per year that were docketed from 2018 through 2023, according to data reported by Conn Maciel Carey.

About 30% of the whistleblower complaints come from the non-OSH Act statutes that the White House is proposing leave OSHA, according to the Labor Department’s budget justification.

Trump’s budget said the shift will help OSHA be more responsive to occupational safety and health-related whistleblower complaints.

The budget proposed moving 38 of OSHA’s 114 whistleblower employees to the new Office of Civil Rights. OSHA’s funding, though, would be cut by $47 million, OFCCP would be zeroed out, and DOL’s overall appropriations would drop by $2.4 billion.

By reducing resources, the Trump’s plan isn’t an efficient fix to handle whistleblower complaints, Miller said.

“If the issue is trying to deal with an overburdened OSHA, give them the money to deal with their backlog,” he said. “Shifting the thousands of non-OSHA 11(c) cases to a smaller office with the fraction of money, means those other cases are going to rot.”

Meanwhile, a key power of the OFCCP is the ability to conduct audits, a tool other civil rights enforcement agencies, such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, don’t have. Even under VEVRAA and Section 503, the agency hasn’t conducted an audit in the past year as it seeks to remove references to the rescinded executive order.

It’s not clear in the Labor Department’s budget justification how much of the new office’s staff would come from remaining OFCCP employees, who are familiar with audits.

To ensure appropriate agency review and enforcement to ensure legal compliance, the reorganization plan may require cross training or division of labor plans, said Letitia Silas, a partner with Conn Maciel Carey.

“It’s going to depend on what processes and resources they have in place. How are they going to execute this?” Silas said. “How will assignments be made? What training will be provided to the employees potentially charged with additional, new duties?”

Congressional Support

Creating an Office of Civil Rights may be legal without congressional approval, unlike last year’s White House proposal that would have transferred Section 503 enforcement to the EEOC.

But defunding OFCCP poses political hurdles, said David Cohen, president and founder of DCI Consulting.

Congress funded the office at $100 million for fiscal year 2026, despite the administration’s initial defunding attempts.

If the White House wasn’t able to cut the agency with Republican’s controlling the White House, House, and Senate, it will be nearly impossible if Democrats take control of either chamber, and it’s unlikely for a full budget to pass ahead of the midterm elections, Cohen said.

“I think all of that is dead on arrival,” he said.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, already vowed to toss Trump’s budget “in the trash.”

Past proposals have suggested creating a separate whistleblower office outside OSHA, but hit roadblocks over division of the statutes, Miller said, adding reforming the underlying legislation would be more efficient.

“None of this solves a problem,” he said.