Just found out that a new memorandum from the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), dated March 5th, 2025, directs all acquisitions executives through the military to stop including language which requires contractors to agree that they will not use segregated facilities as a condition of being a DOD contractor.
Specifically the memorandum bars the use of FAR 52.2220-21 Prohibition of Segregated Facilities. This is a provision which dates back to 1965 and has been updated by a series of Executive Orders over the years adding additional forms of restricted segregation. The most recent change came in 2015 when sexual orientation and gender identity were added via executive order to the list of prohibited forms of segregation. The history and evolution of the Prohibition of Segregated Facilities is discussed here in the Federal Register.
Presumably it is the addition of gender identity which drove the OSD to ban usage of the Prohibition of Segregated Facilities in DOD contracts. Maybe? But the 2015 addition of gender identity to the Prohibition could simply have been revoked. It was added in 2015 and it could be removed in 2025. What they did here, however, is remove everything. So military contractors will no longer have to warrant they don’t have racially segregated facilities or facilities segregated by religion or ethnicity or anything else.
