Proposed Rule Scraps Anti-Discrimination Protections in Apprenticeship

Since taking office earlier this year, the Trump administration has made it a point to weaken civil rights protections for marginalized groups and wield anti-discrimination law in opposition of its very intent. As a first step, President Donald Trump selected a predominantly white, male cabinet—many whom were Fox News hosts with far less experience than their counterparts of color or women who had previously served in these roles. This was a consequential choice that signaled the administration’s position of opposing race-conscious hiring and college admissions in the name of falsely promoting “merit-based” strategies.

Ahead of the publishing of this proposed rule, the administration also severely limited the enforcement of federal civil rights law by shrinking civil rights offices in federal agencies and undermining the power of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) by refusing to staff the commission to a quorum since January.

This proposed rule is one of many actions taken by the administration to limit equitable access to the career and education opportunities that drive economic mobility in the United States.

On July 2nd, the Department of Labor (DOL) released a proposed rule titled “Prohibiting Illegal Discrimination in Registered Apprenticeship Programs,” which would remove a series of policies put in place to ensure people of color, women, and people with disabilities have access to apprenticeship programs and security within them when employed. This, despite the fact that apprenticeship remains predominantly white and male. Only 12 percent of apprentices are women. Only 10 percent are Black. In youth apprenticeship, Black apprentices and women are further underrepresented at eight percent and seven percent of apprentices, respectively. When the DOL should be doubling down on recruitment and retention of people of color, women, and people with disabilities to fulfill the president’s goal of 1 million active apprentices, Trump’s DOL has done the opposite.

Specifically, the proposed rule removes several key equal employment opportunity (29 CFR Part 30) provisions added to the original 1963 rule in 1971 and 2016, including the following:

• Affirmative Action Program Requirements: Proposed rule removes the requirement that apprenticeship sponsors with more than five apprentices retain “affirmative action programs” to conduct a utilization analysis for race, sex, and ethnicity, and set goals. The rule would also rescind the requirement that sponsors review their personnel processes and conduct targeted outreach, recruitment, and retention activities on an annual basis. The proposed rule also removes specific requirements that encourage individuals with disabilities to enter an apprenticeship program by inviting applicants to self-identify in order to track progress toward inclusion goals.

• Prohibition of Intimidation and Retaliation: Proposed rule would rescind the existing prohibition on intimidation of apprentices and “retaliation against individuals exercising rights under part 30,” citing that an apprenticeship-specific rule is “legally unnecessary” since employers are already under the jurisdiction of EEOC.

Instead of acknowledging the current racial and gender demographics of apprentices as predominantly male and white, and the history of discrimination in apprenticeship that led it to be one of the first programs in the United States to include anti-discrimination requirements (predating the Civil Rights Act of 1964), the new rule purports that apprentices are already protected by federal law, so apprenticeship-specific protections are duplicative.

Simultaneously, the Trump administration labeled the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP)’s work enforcing the Civil Rights Act as illegal and discriminatory (allegedly against white people) and broke long-standing norms by firing EEOC commissioners to halt their work protecting employees and enforcing anti-discrimination in the workplace. It’s clear that apprenticeship-specific anti-discrimination protections are very much needed as federal agencies are consistently prevented from protecting workers’ rights.

The proposed rule states that the registering agency should refer complaints alleging unlawful discrimination to “an enforcement agency with appropriate jurisdiction over, and expertise in, investigating compliance with federal or state law,” listing the EEOC, the US Attorney General, or State Attorney General as appropriate agencies. Instead of giving state apprenticeship offices the ability to work with employers to help them become compliant, complainants will have to navigate understaffed systems, which will draw out the complaint process and potential resolution.

The rule also calls for State Apprenticeship Agencies (SAA) to submit a state plan for “nondiscrimination” in apprenticeship within 1 year of the final rule. If the SAA’s state plan is found to be noncompliant, the DOL Office of Apprenticeship may begin the process to “formally derecognize the SAA” within 90 days of notification. This would put 30 states, plus the District of Columbia, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands at risk of losing their State Apprenticeship Agency status if they fail to comply.

The Federal Register states that these changes will lessen prohibitive administrative burden, but the reality is that many of the changes will not be all that helpful or reduce costs for starting a program. For example, the DOL argues that employers will reduce costs by removing the requirement to post an equal employment opportunity pledge. DOL calculated the cost of posting the pledge on an office bulletin board and found that it takes 5 minutes and costs each apprenticeship sponsor $2.93. To post the pledge online takes 10 minutes and costs $14.75 per sponsor. Even if these alleged costs were true, these are not the real barriers to businesses becoming apprenticeship sponsors. For more on the barriers identified by apprenticeship leaders across the US, see Mathematica’s Registered Apprenticeship: A Descriptive Study of States’ Systems and Growth.

It’s clear that the true purposes of this rule are to deconstruct protections for workers of color and women, and restrict equitable access to apprenticeship programs. The DOL aims to provide room for employers to discriminate without fear of being held accountable by government officials.

Let the administration know what you think about this proposed rule by submitting a public comment to the Federal Register by September 2, 2025.