DC is one of the most federal-contractor-dependent labor markets in the country, and the protections those workers can claim after a firing changed materially in January 2025. Executive Order 14173, signed January 21, 2025, revoked Executive Order 11246 in its entirety, eliminating decades of affirmative action and pay equity audit obligations for federal contractors. A wrongful termination attorney DC contractor employees consult today is working in a different legal landscape than even an early-2025 firing presented. The protections have not disappeared. They have shifted, with more weight now resting on Title VII, the DC Human Rights Act, and a narrow set of OFCCP-administered statutes that remain on the books but are partially held in abeyance.
What changed and what stayed
EO 14173 revoked EO 11246 in its entirety. The Department of Labor issued Secretary’s Order 03-2025 directing OFCCP to halt enforcement activity tied to EO 11246, and the implementing regulations were formally proposed for rescission in July 2025. Affirmative action obligations on race, sex, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, and national origin no longer apply to federal contractors as a matter of OFCCP enforcement.
Two pieces of OFCCP jurisdiction technically remain in force:
- Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act, which prohibits disability discrimination by federal contractors and requires affirmative action for individuals with disabilities
- The Vietnam Era Veterans’ Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA), which protects covered veterans
The Department of Labor has held both in abeyance pending further guidance, so active investigations were paused. The statutory protections themselves still exist, and a discriminatorily fired contractor employee can still raise them.
What protections still apply to DC contractor employees
The post-2025 landscape pushes most contractor employees toward the same statutory framework that protects employees of non-contractors:
- Title VII (race, color, sex including pregnancy and sexual orientation, religion, national origin)
- The ADA, for disability discrimination
- The ADEA, for workers 40 and older
- The Equal Pay Act and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act
- GINA, for genetic information
- The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act
- Sarbanes-Oxley, the False Claims Act, and the federal whistleblower statutes
- The Service Contract Act and Davis-Bacon, for wage-and-hour issues
The DC Human Rights Act layers on top for any contractor employee performing work in the District. The DCHRA reaches farther than Title VII (political affiliation, personal appearance, family responsibilities, marital status, matriculation) and has no statutory cap on compensatory or punitive damages.
Why the DCHRA matters more than it did before for Wrongful Termination Attorney DC clients
Before January 2025, OFCCP gave contractor employees an administrative channel for race-and-sex affirmative action complaints. That channel is largely closed. The DCHRA now does work it shared with OFCCP for nearly sixty years. Three advantages stand out:
- Damages are uncapped. Title VII caps compensatory and punitive damages at $50,000 to $300,000 depending on employer size. DCHRA recoveries are not capped.
- The protected category list is broader. A contractor employee fired for political affiliation, personal appearance, or family caregiving duties has no Title VII claim but has a clean DCHRA claim.
- The OHR filing window is 365 days, longer than the EEOC’s 300-day window.
For contractors headquartered outside DC, the DCHRA still applies to work performed in DC, and choice-of-law clauses that would strip DC employees of those protections face skepticism in DC courts.
Security clearance terminations sit in a different lane
A large slice of DC contractor firings travel through security clearance, not through performance management. The Supreme Court’s 1988 decision in Department of Navy v. Egan holds that the substance of a security clearance decision is committed to executive branch agencies and is largely unreviewable by courts. A contractor whose clearance is suspended or revoked, and who is then terminated because the clearance was a condition of employment, faces a different legal landscape than a comparable firing for any other reason.
Narrow exceptions exist. Courts have permitted limited review of:
- Procedural due process challenges to how the clearance decision was made
- The methods used to gather information for the decision
- Colorable constitutional claims under Webster v. Doe, 486 U.S. 592 (1988)
- Whistleblower retaliation tied to clearance actions, particularly after the D.C. Circuit’s analysis in Garcia v. Pompeo
The needle is tight. Egan and its progeny block most discrimination claims at the courthouse door when the firing rests on a clearance decision. Working around it requires identifying procedural irregularities, retaliation patterns, or constitutional violations the agency cannot defend on national-security grounds.
The path to federal court
Most DC contractor wrongful termination claims travel one of two procedural paths:
- File a charge with the EEOC and the DC Office of Human Rights (worksharing covers both), then sue in U.S. District Court or DC Superior Court after exhaustion
- File a private right of action under the DCHRA directly in DC Superior Court within one year of the firing, bypassing OHR
Contractor cases often land in federal court because the defendant removes them or because a clearance issue requires a federal forum. DCHRA claims can travel with the federal claims under supplemental jurisdiction.
Bottom line
The 2025 revocation of EO 11246 changed the protection map for DC federal contractor employees. OFCCP no longer enforces race-and-sex affirmative action obligations, but Title VII, the ADA, the ADEA, federal whistleblower statutes, and the DCHRA all still apply, and the DCHRA does more work than it used to. A consultation with a wrongful termination attorney DC contractor employees rely on can sort which statutes fit, assess any security clearance angle under Egan, and pick the right forum before the OHR or EEOC clock runs out. Useful background reading: OFCCP’s current guidance at dol.gov/agencies/ofccp and the DC OHR at ohr.dc.gov. Internal pages worth pairing with this post include a DCHRA categories explainer, a federal employee wrongful termination guide, and a severance review page. If your clearance is in adjudication and your job is on the line, talk to counsel before the agency issues a final decision.
