On February 18, 2025, the U.S. General Services Administration (“GSA”) announced that it had issued two deviations to the Federal Acquisition Regulations (“FAR”) and procurement practices. With these deviations, federal agencies will no longer consider companies’ diversity, equity and inclusion (“DEI”) practices when awarding federal contracts for goods and services, reversing a Biden administration policy, and federal contracting officers are allowed to amend or modify current solicitations and contracts without penalty. The GSA stated that these actions were necessary to implement certain Executive Orders issued by President Trump, including the “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity” Executive Order. As we previously discussed, shortly after his inauguration, President Trump signed an Executive Order requiring federal contracts to include terms (i) “requiring the contractual counterparty or grant recipient to agree that its compliance in all respects with all applicable Federal anti-discrimination laws is material to the government’s payment decisions”; and (ii) “requiring such counterparty or recipient to certify that it does not operate any programs promoting DEI that violate any applicable Federal anti-discrimination laws.”
The GSA stated that these actions were the “first steps in transforming” the more than 2,000-page FAR into a “sensible, common sense guideline” that is “better align[ed] with commercial practices.”
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