The Department of Labor’s Faith Leader Is Now Also in Charge of Its Civil Rights Enforcement

The person leading the Department of Labor’s controversial monthly worship services has now taken over one of the agency’s most important offices. Kenneth Wolfe, the director of the DOL’s faith center, is now also leading the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP), the office tasked with making sure that federal contractors comply with anti-discrimination laws. Wolfe’s appointment was quietly announced earlier this month, after the agency released its proposed 2027 budget in April, which would eliminate the office entirely. Because it oversees federal contractors, the OFCCP had jurisdiction over “roughly 20 to 25 percent of the American workforce,” says Keir Bickerstaffe, who served as an attorney with the DOL for 16 years before leaving at the end of former president Joe Biden’s term in January 2025. The OFCCP employed labor economists and statistical experts who could examine workforce data for discrimination, and its lawyers could take companies to court. “The OFCCP could get settlements on behalf of an entire class of people, it could seek changes to company policies and practices to eliminate discrimination,” says Bickerstaffe. For many years, it was the agency’s primary mechanism for enforcing civil rights laws. Under President Donald Trump, however, the OFCCP has lost a substantial number of employees to resignations and reductions in force. In one of his first acts in 2025, Trump signed an executive order titled “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” which ordered all agencies to end all “diversity, equity, and inclusion” actions within government and “combat illegal private-sector DEI preferences, mandates, policies, programs, and activities.” This heavily blunted OFCCP’s enforcement abilities. Another executive order signed in March 2026, titled “Addressing DEI Discrimination by Federal Contractors,” requires federal contractors not to engage in any DEI activity. The DOL’s new proposed budget for 2027 cites the 2025 DEI executive order as the reason for eliminating the OFCCP, writing that it was “responsible for enforcing some of these misguided activities, and transfers its remaining statutory program areas to the newly created Office of Civil Rights.” “The organizational consolidation is not a bad thing in theory,” says a DOL employee who spoke to WIRED on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. “But it’s being done in service of a clear agenda that inverts the idea of civil rights.” The DOL did not respond to questions about whether Wolfe will have a leadership role at the Office of Civil Rights once this consolidation happens. According to his LinkedIn, Wolfe’s experience is primarily in communications. He previously served as a speechwriter for a Republican congressman until 2003, before working in the office of communications at the Department of Health and Human Services. He doesn’t list any legal experience, which was a red flag to Bickerstaffe: “I believe every prior OFCCP director, certainly the ones I worked under, had a legal background and specifically at least some sort of background in civil rights law,” says the former DOL attorney. The DOL did not respond to questions about what qualifications Wolfe has to lead the office, or what his role may be in its wind-down over the next year. Before assuming his new role, Wolfe was one of several faith center directors across government hosting monthly worship services. In one worship service, pastor Leon Benjamin, a former Republican congressional candidate, told employees that their job was “getting America to understand that [work] is something that God expects us to do.” DOL employees who spoke to WIRED at the time said that the worship services, which took place during the workday, made them uncomfortable. There is, apparently, one type of discrimination, however, that the DOL is still paying close attention to: In April, the agency announced it would partner with the Department of Justice to “eradicate anti-Christian bias.” Earlier this year, the agency released a tool that summarizes each state’s laws regarding religious discrimination in the workplace.