The rule’s fatal flaw is that it only addresses active candidates, which are pretty much post-recruitment outputs v. passive candidates, which is where one would assume that much of the illegal discrimination that occurs is actually happening.

There has never been the slightest showing that discrimination is happening via use of keywords: like voter fraud, it seems a lot easier in theory.

If you want to truly cut down discrimination (pre-interview anyway), make it illegal to collect name and address info from job applicants until they have been interviewed. Watch the howls you would get from that, even though there is no real business need to know a person’s name or address in terms of employment qualifications…..

This rule is just simple logrolling so OFCCP could make a rule that would not get kicked back against too hard- it does very, very little about employment discrimination.