EEOC Rescinds Affirmative Action Guidelines — Safe Harbor for DEI Programs Eliminated, Enforcement Targeting Intensifies

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission voted on June 30, 2026 to rescind its Affirmative Action Interpretive Guidelines and the related Compliance Manual on Affirmative Action — guidance established in 1979 that provided the framework for evaluating voluntary affirmative action plans and a good-faith compliance safe harbor for employers implementing such plans. The EEOC stated that the guidelines were inconsistent with the text of Title VII and contradicted Supreme Court precedent developed in the decades since their adoption. The rescission follows the EEOC's recently announced Enforcement Plan and is explicitly consistent with the agency's current enforcement priorities targeting DEI programs in the private sector. For employment counsel advising US clients on DEI program governance, the rescission removes the primary safe harbor framework that employers used to structure voluntary affirmative action plans — meaning that DEI initiatives previously designed in good-faith reliance on the 1979 guidelines now lack the regulatory architecture that justified them. The combination of rescission, active enforcement plan, and the broader executive-branch posture toward DEI means that the risk profile for DEI-adjacent employment practices has materially increased, and any client maintaining programs designed under the prior guidance should conduct a legal review.