# Keith Sonderling

# Keith Sonderling

Keith E. Sonderling is an American labor and employment lawyer serving as United States secretary of labor, the head of the [United States Department of Labor](/organizations/united-states-department-of-labor). The [United States Senate](/organizations/united-states-senate) confirmed him on September 30, 2026, by 47–41, with 12 senators not voting. He had been acting secretary since April 20, 2026, when [Lori Chavez-DeRemer](/people/lori-chavez-deremer) resigned, and [President Donald Trump](/people/mig-donald-trump) nominated him to the permanent post on June 29, 2026. The department states that he was sworn into office on October 2, 2026, and that Treasury Secretary [Scott Bessent](/people/scott-bessent) administered an oath at an Oval Office ceremony on October 9. Safety+Health, published by the National Safety Council, described the confirmation as making him the department's 31st leader.

Chavez-DeRemer left for private-sector work while news organizations reported that the department's inspector general was examining allegations about her conduct. Sonderling had already been the department's deputy secretary, confirmed on March 12, 2025, by 53–46, and in that job oversaw day-to-day operations. During Trump's first term he was acting administrator and then deputy administrator of the department's Wage and Hour Division, from 2017 to 2020. The Senate confirmed him as a commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on September 22, 2020, by 52–41, for a term expiring July 1, 2024; Trump designated him vice chair, and he was sworn in on September 30, 2020. He continued as a commissioner until August 2024.

Before joining the administration in 2017 he practiced labor and employment law at the Florida firm Gunster, where he became a partner. He earned a B.S., magna cum laude, from the University of Florida and a J.D., magna cum laude, from Nova Southeastern University. He has also taught employment law as an adjunct at the George Washington University Law School. The department's biography says that in 2025 Trump also named him acting director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services and acting under secretary of commerce for minority business development, and that in June 2026 Trump designated him acting director of the Office of Government Ethics, a role he held alongside his labor posts.

Sonderling grew up in Boca Raton, Florida. In his deputy-secretary confirmation hearing he said his Jewish grandparents, who survived the Holocaust, later lost employment in the United States because of their religion. Jewish Insider reported that he was 43 in April 2026, that he had served on the national Jewish leadership committee for [Jeb Bush](/people/jeb-bush)'s 2016 presidential campaign, and that he married Fara, a lobbyist, in Jerusalem in 2019. At the Wage and Hour Division he was publicly associated with guidance treating many drivers for companies such as Uber and Lyft as independent contractors rather than employees, and at the EEOC he became known for speeches and writing on artificial intelligence in the workplace.

## Early life and education

### Family and upbringing

Keith E. Sonderling was born on November 25, 1982, in New York City and grew up in Boca Raton, Florida. Florida Politics, describing him as 42 when he was named deputy labor secretary in January 2025, reported that he was born in [New York](/organizations/new-york); Jewish Insider described him as 43 in April 2026. The *Jüdische Allgemeine* likewise placed his birth in New York in 1982 and identified him as Jewish and the grandchild of Holocaust survivors. Covering a 2026 visit to South Florida, the *Sun Sentinel* called him a Boca Raton native.

The Boca Raton outlet BocaNewsNow has identified him as the son of Howard Sonderling, a gastroenterologist who practiced in the city. In 1996 the *Sun Sentinel* profiled Eric Sonderling, then 11 and a student at Pine Crest School in Boca Raton, and named Howard Sonderling as Eric’s father. Eric’s published children’s story drew on interviews with his grandmother, Berta Potash of Delray Beach, who told the paper she had been a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps, had lost her parents and two brothers, and had escaped a winter death march by leaving a theater where the prisoners were held overnight and fleeing into the woods.

In written testimony to the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee in 2025, Sonderling said he was “the grandchild of Holocaust survivors.” He said his grandmother, forcibly taken from her family as a young teenager, “survived a concentration camp only by fleeing into the woods during a death march,” and that his grandfather escaped the Warsaw Ghetto and then joined the Allied forces. Both, he said, lost many relatives, immigrated to the United States, and later were denied jobs because of their religion and life circumstances, a history he connected to his interest in workplace rights. He credited his parents, who attended the hearing, with providing a “firm foundation” for public service, but he did not name them in the statement.

Sonderling graduated in 2001 from Spanish River Community High School, a Palm Beach County public high school in Boca Raton. At a February 2016 fundraiser, the Spanish River Community High School Foundation gave him its Alumni Achievement Award and identified him with the class of 2001. Boca Raton Mayor Scott Singer later called him an honored alumnus of the school.

### University and law school

He received a Bachelor of Science, magna cum laude, from the University of Florida in 2005. The university’s College of Journalism and Communications lists the degree as a B.S. in Telecommunication. In the 2005–06 undergraduate catalog, that major, in the college’s Department of Telecommunication, required 124 credit hours and offered specializations in telecommunication news, production, and management; published biographies do not say which specialization he completed. A biography posted by the Florida law firm Gunster also listed him with Florida Blue Key and the Florida Cicerones, student organizations at the university.

He then earned a J.D., magna cum laude, in 2008 from Nova Southeastern University’s Shepard Broad College of Law. The firm biography recorded a dean’s merit scholarship and service as a notes and comments editor of the *Nova Law Review*. In 2009 the review published his student note, “POLST: A Cure for the Common Advance Directive—It’s Just What the Doctor Ordered,” at 33 *Nova Law Review* 451. He was admitted to the Florida Bar in 2008.

## Private legal practice

### Gunster

Sonderling was admitted to The Florida Bar in 2008 and practiced in West Palm Beach at Gunster, Yoakley & Stewart, P.A. (Gunster), where a 2016 firm biography described a labor and employment and business-litigation practice representing corporate clients. The Florida Bar News reported on April 1, 2015, that he had become a shareholder, focusing on employment and business law in West Palm Beach. In later Senate testimony he said he had spent his legal career as a labor and employment lawyer in Florida and joined the United States Department of Labor in 2017 as a senior policy advisor.

Filings in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida show both employment and commercial work. In *Tracy v. Florida Atlantic University Board of Trustees*, a federal civil-rights suit by James Tracy, Sonderling appeared with other Gunster lawyers for the Florida Atlantic University board and several officials. On December 15, 2016, after oral argument on December 1, Judge Robin L. Rosenberg granted in part and denied in part the defendants' motion to dismiss.

On November 14, 2016, Sonderling signed the complaint in *Li v. Walsh*, No. 9:16-cv-81871, in the court's West Palm Beach division, with Gunster colleagues G. Joseph Curley and Devin Radkay. Dozens of plaintiffs, described as Chinese and Iranian investors, alleged a $50 million fraud tied to the Palm House Hotel project in Palm Beach and the federal EB-5 program. The complaint alleged that each plaintiff paid $500,000 plus a $40,000 fee on promises that the money would be escrowed and used to finish a hotel and create jobs, and that the funds were instead diverted—including toward a yacht priced at nearly $6 million—while the property was not developed and no EB-5 visas were issued. It demanded a jury trial, damages, and injunctions, and included claims under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Docket entries still list Sonderling as filing counsel in January 2017.

### Judicial nominating work and civic roles

Florida law then gave each district court of appeal a nine-member judicial nominating commission appointed by the governor: four members of The Florida Bar, chosen from lists submitted by the Bar's board of governors, and five residents of the territory, at least two of them practicing lawyers. A member could not, during the term and for two years afterward, be appointed to a judicial office for which that commission made nominations.

Governor [Rick Scott](/people/rick-scott) appointed Sonderling in 2012 to the commission for the Florida Fourth District Court of Appeal; his October 2016 firm biography said Scott reappointed him that year through 2020, that he had been vice chair in 2014–15, and that he was chair. The Florida Bar News of July 15, 2016, identified him as chair when the commission sought applicants for the vacancy left by the retirement of Judge W. Matthew Stevenson. Applications were due by 5 p.m. on August 15, 2016, at his Gunster office, 777 South Flagler Drive, Suite 500E, West Palm Beach, and applicants had to have been Florida Bar members for the preceding ten years. The Broward County Bar Association published the same instructions.

He also served on the Civil Service Board of Delray Beach. A September 8, 2016, city-commission item said the terms of regular members Keith Sonderling and Carol Clark expired on July 1, 2016, after two full terms, so neither could be reappointed. Under the city's Civil Service Act, the board had five regular members: three appointed by the city commission from different vocational backgrounds and not employed by the city, and two elected by eligible city employees.

## Wage and Hour Division

### Appointment and enforcement

In September 2017, Keith Sonderling joined the Wage and Hour Division of the United States Department of Labor as a senior policy adviser, the division’s first political appointee of that administration. He came from the Gunster firm in West Palm Beach, Florida, where he was a shareholder defending employers in labor and employment cases. The division administers and enforces the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938—including minimum wage, overtime, and child labor—the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, the labor provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, and several prevailing-wage statutes for federal contracts.

He was promoted to deputy administrator in January 2019. On February 1, 2019, the department designated him acting administrator, succeeding Bryan Jarrett, while Cheryl Stanton’s nomination to the permanent post was still pending. The Senate confirmed Stanton on April 10, 2019, by 53–45, and Sonderling continued as deputy administrator. While at the division he led public listening sessions on planned revisions to the regulations for the FLSA’s executive, administrative, and professional overtime exemptions. He left after the Senate confirmed him, 52–41, to the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on September 22, 2020; he was sworn in on September 30.

HR Dive, using the division’s figures, reported back-wage recoveries of about $322 million in 2019 and about $257 million in fiscal 2020, which it described as the lowest such total in five years. Those amounts cover the division’s concluded cases as a whole and were not published as the results of any one official.

### Guidance, opinion letters, and the PAID program

In June 2017, before Sonderling arrived, the department resumed Wage and Hour opinion letters—written answers on how the FLSA, the FMLA, and related laws apply to particular facts—after the Obama administration stopped issuing them in 2010 in favor of broader Administrator’s Interpretations. Employers have used the letters as support for a good-faith defense in wage claims.

On April 29, 2019, still identified as acting administrator, Sonderling signed opinion letter FLSA2019-6. It responded to one virtual marketplace company in the gig economy, which the letter called the “on-demand” or “sharing” economy: an online or smartphone referral service connecting consumers with providers of transportation, delivery, household work, and similar services. Applying a six-factor economic-reality test—control, permanency, investment, skill, opportunity for profit or loss, and integration—the division concluded that the company’s service providers were independent contractors, not its employees. On February 19, 2021, the division withdrew that letter and another 2019 letter, stating that the marketplace letter was “based on rules that have not gone into effect” and could no longer be relied on as agency policy.

As acting administrator he signed, on March 29, 2019, a proposal to revise the FLSA joint-employer regulation, published on April 9. The proposal used a four-factor balancing test drawn from *Bonnette v. California Health and Welfare Agency*: whether the potential joint employer hires or fires the worker, supervises and controls schedules or working conditions, sets the rate and method of pay, and maintains employment records. It treated the actual exercise of that control, rather than a reserved contractual right alone, as the relevant inquiry. Administrator Cheryl Stanton signed the final rule on December 27, 2019; it was published on January 16, 2020, and took effect on March 16, 2020. On September 8, 2020, Judge Gregory H. Woods of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, in a suit against Secretary [Eugene Scalia](/people/eugene-scalia), vacated the rule’s provisions on “vertical” relationships such as staffing firms and subcontractors, while leaving the “horizontal” provisions for associated employers in place; the department said it was disappointed and would review its options. A final rule published on July 30, 2021, rescinded the 2020 regulation, and the effective date of that rescission was delayed to October 5, 2021.

Contemporaneous accounts described Sonderling as a proponent of the Payroll Audit Independent Determination program, or PAID, under which employers could self-report certain FLSA violations, pay the back wages already owed, and receive a release without liquidated damages or civil money penalties. On April 11, 2018, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and the attorneys general of ten other jurisdictions wrote to Secretary [Alexander Acosta](/people/alexander-acosta) that the pilot functioned as amnesty for wage theft: it released employers from liquidated damages, penalties, and interest, did not require payment at higher state or local rates, and encouraged separate waivers of state-law claims that the department would not supervise. A later public-records review found that at least 74 employers took part between April 2018 and September 15, 2019, reporting 7,429 violations and paying more than $4 million in back wages. On January 29, 2021, Principal Deputy Administrator Jessica Looman ended PAID immediately, saying the program “deprived workers of their rights and put employers that play by the rules at a disadvantage.”

## Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

### Nomination, confirmation, and vice chair

President Donald Trump nominated Keith E. Sonderling of Florida to the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on July 17, 2019. The nomination expired without a vote, and Trump renominated him on March 16, 2020. The Senate confirmed him on September 22, 2020, by 52–41, for a term expiring July 1, 2024. Democrats [Doug Jones](/people/doug-jones), [Joe Manchin](/people/econ-joe-manchin), and [Kyrsten Sinema](/people/kyrsten-sinema) voted yes with [the Republicans](/organizations/the-republicans); most Democrats and independent Angus King voted no, and seven senators did not vote.

He was sworn in on September 30, 2020, as a commissioner and as vice chair. Under [Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964](/facts/civil-rights-act-of-1964), the president designates the chair and vice chair apart from Senate confirmation of members. He joined Chair Janet Dhillon and Commissioners Charlotte A. Burrows and Victoria A. Lipnic, with one of five seats vacant. Dhillon cited his Labor Department experience. Sonderling said he was “humbled and honored” and would use that background to “prevent and remedy workplace discrimination.”

The vice chairmanship ended after the change of administration. On January 21, 2021, the commission announced that [President Joe Biden](/people/env-person-joe-biden) had named Burrows chair and Jocelyn Samuels vice chair. Sonderling remained a commissioner. His term expired on July 1, 2024. Title VII lets a member continue only until a successor is appointed and qualified, and not for more than 60 days while Congress is in session unless a nomination is pending. Bloomberg Law reported that month that he would leave as the term ended.

### Commission votes and guidance

With a Democratic majority in place, Sonderling and fellow Republican Andrea R. Lucas were outvoted on the two 2024 documents that drew the widest comment.

On April 3, 2024, the commission approved, 3–2, a final rule and interpretive guidance under the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. Chair Charlotte Burrows, Vice Chair Jocelyn Samuels, and Commissioner Kalpana Kotagal voted yes; Sonderling and Lucas voted no. The 2022 law requires covered employers to accommodate known limitations related to pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions absent undue hardship. The preamble said the commission expected some conditions to be treated as related to pregnancy or childbirth, including lactation, miscarriage, stillbirth, preeclampsia, and “having or choosing not to have an abortion,” and it tied that reading to longstanding pregnancy-discrimination interpretations. Lucas’s statement, copied to Sonderling, called the statute a “tremendous, bipartisan legislative achievement” but said the rule erred “in conflating pregnancy and childbirth accommodation with accommodation of the female sex” and reached “virtually every condition, circumstance, or procedure that relates to any aspect of the female reproductive system.” Sonderling filed no separate statement. Fortune reported that disagreement over abortion had delayed the regulations.

On April 26, 2024, the same 3–2 split approved Enforcement Guidance on Harassment in the Workplace. Lucas’s dissent quoted the guidance as treating possible harassment to include “denial of access to a bathroom or other sex-segregated facility consistent with [an] individual’s gender identity” and “repeated and intentional use of a name or pronoun inconsistent with [an] individual’s known gender identity.” She wrote that it “effectively eliminates single-sex workplace facilities,” burdens speech and belief, and “ignores biological reality.” Sonderling left no separate statement. The same month he also joined unanimous votes, including a Title VII retaliation amicus recommendation.

At his February 27, 2025, hearing to be deputy labor secretary, committee chairman [Bill Cassidy](/people/bill-cassidy) called the 2020 confirmation bipartisan and said Sonderling had opposed what Cassidy described as attempts to “disregard Congressional authority and inject progressive ideology into regulations.”

### Workplace technology, teaching, and the transition

Much of his public work concerned artificial intelligence in employment decisions. With Bradford J. Kelley and Lance Casimir, he wrote “The Promise and The Peril: Artificial Intelligence and Employment Discrimination” (2022). The article said carefully designed tools could match workers to jobs and reduce human bias, that bad design or use could discriminate, and that existing law plus employer testing should govern rather than a new comprehensive federal AI statute.

At an American Payroll Association congress, Bloomberg Tax reported, he said AI “can help eliminate bias from the early stages of the hiring process” if set to ignore names or other cues that may signal race, sex, age, or disability, but that systems trained on a homogeneous workforce will reproduce it and employers remain liable. “Our laws might be old but they are not outdated,” he said.

On January 31, 2023, at the hearing “Navigating Employment Discrimination in AI and Automated Systems: A New Civil Rights Frontier,” he said AI “can mitigate the risk of unlawful discrimination and create accessible workplaces,” but called the panels one-sided. Of 12 witnesses—among them researchers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the [American Civil Liberties Union](/organizations/american-civil-liberties-union), and worker advocates—he said two represented employers and none had designed, sold, or had to implement workplace AI, which he called a “disservice to the public.” On April 9, 2024, he and Lucas voted against an amicus brief in *Mobley v. Workday, Inc.*, a Title VII, Americans with Disabilities Act, and age case about race, disability, and age claims involving automated employment tools. The majority approved the brief, 3–2.

During the term he taught as an adjunct at George Washington University Law School, which describes his subject as employment discrimination. A 2023 faculty paper with Aram Gavoor, listing him as a “GW Law Adjunct,” proposed using financial-industry model-risk-management controls to measure AI bias in human-resources decisions.

After the commission he worked on the incoming administration’s handover at the Department of Labor. At the February 2025 hearing, Senator [Angela Alsobrooks](/people/angela-alsobrooks) described him as a senior member of the department’s landing team and of the transition. He said he had been there as an adviser since the administration’s first day and did not dispute that description.

## Deputy Secretary of Labor

### Nomination and confirmation hearing

On January 20, 2025, President Donald Trump nominated Keith Sonderling of Florida to be deputy secretary of the United States Department of Labor, succeeding [Julie A. Su](/people/julie-su). He told the United States Senate that his volunteer work on the Trump-Vance transition ended at the inauguration and that he had been a full-time senior adviser at the department since that day. *Safety+Health* reported that he advised acting Secretary Vince Micone until Lori Chavez-DeRemer was sworn in as secretary on March 11.

The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions heard the nomination on February 27, 2025, in room SD-562 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Chairman Bill Cassidy described the deputy secretary as second in command and chief operating officer, managing about 17,000 employees and a $14 billion budget and directing sub-agencies on policy, regulation, and enforcement.

Cassidy asked him to bring back the first Trump administration’s rule for independent contractors and a narrower joint-employer standard. Sonderling said the contractor regulation then in force was in litigation, that he stood by the earlier version because it tracked longstanding legal principles and Supreme Court tests, and that workers and employers needed rules they could understand. He agreed a broad joint-employer test hurts small businesses and employees relative to one focused on who directs the work.

Most Democratic questions concerned staffing cuts and the [Department of Government Efficiency](/organizations/department-of-government-efficiency). [Tim Kaine](/people/tim-kaine) asked how many department employees, and how many veterans, had lost jobs since Inauguration Day. Sonderling said a senior adviser had no hiring or firing authority and that he did not know the figures; he referred Kaine to the acting secretary, the assistant secretary for management, and human resources. Kaine said “if confirmed” was not an answer for someone already in the building. He argued that firing probationary employees—newer hires, often young workers or veterans changing careers, not people disciplined for misconduct—hit veterans hardest, and he put veterans at about 30 percent of the federal civilian workforce. Sonderling said he had not analyzed that workforce, that he had hired veterans, and that career personnel and legal staff would apply executive orders and Office of Personnel Management directives without discrimination.

[Maggie Hassan](/people/maggie-hassan) said he had heard the same layoff questions in a staff interview and still had no numbers. She and [Tammy Baldwin](/people/tammy-baldwin) asked about DOGE access to sensitive systems, including workers’ compensation medical files, financial records, whistleblower identities, and [Occupational Safety and Health Administration](/organizations/occupational-safety-and-health-administration) enforcement files, and about conflicts if [Elon Musk](/people/elon-musk)’s associates could use the data privately. Sonderling said the [Department of Justice](/organizations/department-of-justice) was defending a union lawsuit on access and that career ethics officials would prevent conflicts. Asked whether access was frozen, he said that “everything related to DOGE’s access or requested access to the Department of Labor is in litigation right now” and that, from public information about the suit, “there has been zero access given.” Baldwin, an appropriator for the department, also asked him to spend money as Congress provided; he said budget work would be new to him, that spending decisions would go through the solicitor’s office, and that he would follow the law.

[Lisa Blunt Rochester](/people/lisa-blunt-rochester), a former Delaware labor secretary, said she had asked privately how many employees had been let go and, during the hearing, found a Bloomberg Law report on the cuts. When she asked whether those workers were also the American workforce he would put first, he said, “Of course.” She called the reductions arbitrary rather than workforce planning. [Lisa Murkowski](/people/lisa-murkowski) said Alaskans were nervous about who was gaining access and wanted sensitive data kept confidential. Ed Markey asked him to oppose anything that would make workplaces less safe. Sonderling promised to check that enforcement agencies had enough investigators where violations were highest and said he read an executive order and an OPM directive as exempting health and safety inspectors; he did not promise the broader opposition Markey wanted. In written follow-up he again gave no count of employees fired, furloughed, or on leave since January 20, writing that those decisions sit with the assistant secretary for management, and he said Executive Order 14210 exempts law-enforcement and public-safety jobs.

### Confirmation and department management

The committee voted 12–11 on March 6, 2025, to send the nomination to the floor. Cassidy said Sonderling had pledged to support independent workers and to clarify what federal labor law requires. On March 12 the Senate voted 53–45 to limit debate, with [Tammy Duckworth](/people/tammy-duckworth) and [Bernie Sanders](/people/bernie-sanders) not voting, then confirmed him 53–46, with Duckworth not voting. Every yes on confirmation was Republican; every no was a Democrat or an independent who caucuses with the Democrats.

On March 18 the department announced him as the 38th deputy secretary. Chavez-DeRemer said his experience would help put “the American Worker First,” and he said he would help carry out the president’s labor agenda. In the operating role Cassidy had described, he managed the department under her until she left. On April 20, 2026, [White House](/organizations/white-house) communications director [Steven Cheung](/people/steven-cheung) said she was leaving for the private sector and that Sonderling would be acting secretary.

## Acting roles at other agencies

While at the United States Department of Labor, Keith Sonderling held three other acting posts in the administration of President Donald Trump. His June 30, 2026 OGE Form 278e dated an Institute of Museum and Library Services directorship, and a Commerce undersecretary post for a “Minority Business Development Authority,” to March–November 2025, and an Office of Government Ethics directorship to June 2026.

### Institute of Museum and Library Services

The Institute of Museum and Library Services is an independent federal grant-maker for libraries and museums. Executive Order 14238, signed March 14, 2025, told IMLS, the Minority Business Development Agency, and five other entities to eliminate non-statutory functions “to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law” and to reduce statutory work and staff to the legal minimum, with a compliance report to the Office of Management and Budget within seven days.

Then-deputy labor secretary Sonderling was sworn in as acting IMLS director on March 20, 2025. The agency quoted him promising to work “in lockstep with this Administration” and to “restore focus on patriotism, ensuring we preserve our country’s core values, promote American exceptionalism and cultivate love of country in future generations.” AFGE Local 3403 told NPR he arrived that morning with security and Department of Government Efficiency staff and was sworn in in the lobby.

On March 26, Senators [Susan Collins](/people/susan-collins), [Jack Reed](/people/jack-reed), [Kirsten Gillibrand](/people/kirsten-gillibrand), and Lisa Murkowski, authors of the 2018 Museum and Library Services Act that Trump had signed, wrote that the administration had to follow the statute and that year’s appropriation, tied to the prior $294.8 million allocation. On March 31, staff were placed on 90-day administrative leave without email or other systems; AFGE Local 30 said grant processing had effectively stopped. On April 3 the National Museum and Library Services Board said it was “disappointed” to learn of the leave from the news and asked what DOGE was doing.

The [American Library Association](/organizations/american-library-association) and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees sued Sonderling, IMLS, Trump, and DOGE officials on April 7, 2025, in *American Library Association v. Sonderling* (D.D.C.). [Publishers Weekly](/organizations/publishers-weekly) reported that the complaint alleged violations of the separation of powers, the Take Care Clause, and the Administrative Procedure Act, and that it said about 12 of roughly six dozen employees remained after Sonderling removed all 23 board members on April 4.

Judge Richard J. Leon granted a temporary restraining order on May 1, 2025, then denied a preliminary injunction without prejudice on June 6, treating the case as largely contractual under the Tucker Act, including about $2.5 million the ALA said it was owed. In *Rhode Island v. Trump*, Judge John J. McConnell Jr. kept a May injunction for 21 states after denying a stay on June 5; the government, including Sonderling, said it was restoring IMLS staff and some grants.

On April 9, 2026, the ALA and AFSCME settled with the Justice Department. The [Associated Press](/organizations/associated-press) reported that 2025 layoffs were rescinded, employees could return, and further reductions in force would not be used to carry out the order. The ALA said canceled grants were reinstated. Dismissal without prejudice was to follow, three days after the administration was allowed to drop its appeal in the states’ case.

### Minority Business Development Agency

The Minority Business Development Agency, in the United States Department of Commerce, awards grants, including to business centers, for minority-business programs that senators said Congress had fixed by statute. The March 14 order covered the agency as well.

On May 1, 2025, ranking member [Maria Cantwell](/people/maria-cantwell), [Martin Heinrich](/people/martin-heinrich), [Ben Ray Luján](/people/ben-ray-lujan), and other Democrats wrote Sonderling as acting under secretary and said every MBDA grant had been canceled. A notice signed by Nate Cavanaugh of DOGE “Under the Authority of Keith Sonderling, Acting Undersecretary of MBDA” said a grant was “no longer consistent with the agency’s priorities” and that funds were being repurposed “in furtherance of the President’s agenda.” The senators wrote that they had information he might not have known the notices used his name, and asked whether Secretary [Howard Lutnick](/people/howard-lutnick) or Elon Musk and DOGE were “actually running the Department,” noting Lutnick had testified he would not support dismantling the agency.

### Office of Government Ethics

The Office of Government Ethics leads the executive-branch ethics program, meant to prevent financial conflicts of interest at more than 140 agencies. It oversees ethics rules and financial disclosures and does not investigate or prosecute misconduct.

On June 23, 2026, Trump named Sonderling, then acting labor secretary, acting OGE director and nominated Michael Chamberlain for the permanent post. OGE announced both steps the next day. His Form 278e, signed June 30 and certified on July 14 by department ethics officials and OGE, listed that acting role as concurrent with the acting Labor secretaryship and said he had stopped private consulting on entering federal service.

## Secretary of Labor

### Acting secretary

On April 20, 2026, Lori Chavez-DeRemer resigned as United States secretary of labor. White House communications director Steven Cheung said she was leaving the administration to take a private-sector position and that Deputy Secretary Keith Sonderling would serve as acting secretary of the Department of Labor. Chavez-DeRemer wrote that it had been “an honor and a privilege” to serve. The resignation came the day before an interview the department’s Office of Inspector General had scheduled for April 21; her attorney later declined to make her available, and investigators did not interview her. The office had opened the inquiry on January 6, 2026, after an anonymous complaint concerning Chavez-DeRemer and senior aides.

The inspector general’s report, dated September 3, 2026, applied a preponderance-of-the-evidence standard and concluded that her conduct was inconsistent with applicable standards in six areas. Those were department policy on workplace harassment; an “inappropriately close and unprofessional relationship” with a supervisor on her protective detail; combining personal and official travel; possessing and consuming alcohol on federal property without the written authorization department policy required; directing employees to perform personal tasks on official time; and failing to report gifts through required ethics channels. Thirty-eight witnesses described the Office of the Secretary as “toxic, intimidating and humiliating.” The office said the evidence it reviewed was not sufficient to establish a romantic or sexual relationship. Chavez-DeRemer said the report ended “with no legal wrongdoing,” and her attorney, Nick Oberheiden, said it found no violations of law and relied on undisclosed witnesses and hearsay. A department spokesperson said the agency “respects the integrity of the Inspector General’s investigation.” Axios reported that the White House had previously described accusations against her as baseless. The inspector general provided the report to the acting secretary for any action he considered appropriate. Sonderling was not a principal subject; CBS News reported that the report mentioned him mainly in a passage saying that Chavez-DeRemer and her chief of staff had grown to distrust him.

### Nomination and Senate confirmation

Donald Trump announced on June 29, 2026, that he would nominate Sonderling, of Florida, saying Sonderling had “proven his dedication to delivering strong results for the Hardworking People of our Country.” The Senate received the nomination, PN1129, on July 13, 2026, and referred it to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. The committee held a confirmation hearing on July 16 in the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Chairman Bill Cassidy said Sonderling was qualified and that, as secretary, he would protect workers, help businesses create jobs, and help workers navigate changes from artificial intelligence. Senator [Patty Murray](/people/patty-murray), a senior Democrat on the committee, said she opposed confirmation and argued that Sonderling, who had served as deputy secretary and then acting secretary, bore responsibility for department policies she described as anti-worker, including rescission of an overtime rule.

On July 30 the committee voted 12–11 to report the nomination favorably. On September 30 the Senate invoked cloture, 53–47, on Record Vote 255, and then confirmed Sonderling, 47–41, on Record Vote 256. Every Republican who voted supported both cloture and confirmation; every Democrat who voted, together with independents [Angus King](/people/angus-king) and Bernie Sanders, opposed both. Twelve senators—six Republicans and six Democrats—did not vote on confirmation. CBS News described the confirmation as the Senate’s last order of business before members left for the rest of the month.

### Swearing-in and the start of the term

The department said Sonderling took the official oath of office on October 2, 2026, and that on October 9 Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent administered a ceremonial oath in the Oval Office. The department’s announcement called him the 31st secretary; the inspector general’s report had described Chavez-DeRemer as the 30th.

The morning of the official oath, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that nonfarm payroll employment rose by 29,000 in September and that the unemployment rate was 4.2 percent, with both measures little changed. In a statement issued that day as secretary, Sonderling highlighted gains of 11,000 construction jobs and 9,000 manufacturing jobs and credited the administration’s economic agenda, investment, and tax policy. The bureau described employment in both industries as little changed over the month, while reporting that manufacturing employment was up 72,000 from a recent low in December 2025.

At the October 9 ceremony, the department quoted Sonderling as saying it was “the honor of my life” to serve as the 31st secretary and that his mission was to ensure American workers had the skills and resources to take job opportunities being created in the country. The announcement did not describe a separate set of new directives; he had already been leading the department as acting secretary since April.

## Labor and employment policy

### Wages, classification, and overtime

From the Wage and Hour Division through later posts at the Department of Labor, Sonderling has favored guidance and voluntary repayment over a broader reading of who is an employee under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

As acting administrator he signed opinion letter FLSA2019-6 on April 29, 2019, finding that service providers who obtained work through an online referral platform were independent contractors, not employees of the platform. The Biden administration withdrew the letter in 2021. In May 2025, with Sonderling as deputy secretary, the division stopped using the 2024 contractor rule in its investigations and directed staff to a 2008 fact sheet and the reinstated letter. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce welcomed the pause; Marc Freedman, its vice president for employment policy, said the 2024 rule would “deprive millions of Americans the freedom to choose to work as an independent contractor.”

On February 27, 2026, the division proposed to replace the 2024 unweighted multifactor test with a modified version of the January 2021 analysis, weighting control and opportunity for profit or loss most heavily, and to apply it under the Family and Medical Leave Act and the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act. The National Employment Law Project said it conflicted with those statutes and would widen misclassification in construction, delivery, care, and app-dispatched work. The Economic Policy Institute urged withdrawal on the ground that workers would lose minimum-wage and overtime coverage. At Sonderling’s July 16, 2026, confirmation hearing, Senator Patty Murray called a $3.7 billion annual estimate of the loss “an outright grift,” while Chairman Bill Cassidy said the earlier policy let workers choose how they earn a living.

An April 23, 2026, proposal would restore the 2020 joint-employer rule, which requires actual control over hiring, schedules, pay, or records and treats a reserved right to control as insufficient by itself. Freedman credited Acting Secretary Sonderling with a “common-sense framework” for small businesses, contractors, and franchisees. Murray said it would let large firms avoid liability when subcontracted workers were unpaid or other standards were violated.

Federal courts in Texas vacated the department’s 2024 white-collar overtime rule in November and December 2024. On May 15, 2026, while Sonderling was acting secretary, the division, without notice and comment, deleted that text and restored the 2019 thresholds—$684 a week ($35,568 a year) for the executive, administrative, and professional exemptions, and $107,432 for highly compensated employees—describing the change as conforming the regulations to judgments already in force. Murray called it a door closed on time-and-a-half for more than four million lower-paid salaried workers.

The Payroll Audit Independent Determination program, run from 2018 until the Biden administration ended it in 2021, lets employers pay disclosed back wages and avoid liquidated damages and penalties. On July 24, 2025, he announced its return, extended to certain leave errors, calling self-audits “one of the most effective ways to build a culture of compliance and trust.” The Economic Policy Institute called the restart employer-friendly.

### Discrimination law and workplace technology

At the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Sonderling voted with the Republican minority against broader pregnancy and harassment guidance and against an amicus brief on automated hiring.

On April 3, 2024, the commission adopted the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act rule by 3–2; Sonderling and Andrea Lucas voted no. Lucas’s statement, sent to the commission including Sonderling, said the rule reached “virtually every condition, circumstance, or procedure” related to the female reproductive system, not only pregnancy and childbirth. Reporting described that reading as covering leave for abortion; Sonderling issued no separate dissent.

On April 26 the same pair voted against the harassment guidance, which passed 3–2. Lucas wrote that it treated repeated use of a pronoun inconsistent with a worker’s gender identity, and denial of a matching facility, as harassment under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, although *Bostock v. Clayton County* had declined to decide bathrooms and similar spaces. On April 9 Sonderling voted against an amicus brief in *Mobley v. Workday* on Title VII, Americans with Disabilities Act, and age claims alleging screening by race, disability, and age.

In December 2023 he said artificial intelligence does not discriminate by itself and that one biased tool can reach “hundreds of thousands or millions of applicants,” with the employer liable either way. At his February 27, 2025, deputy-secretary hearing he said transparent systems could show “if it was fair or see if it was biased,” with the aim that tools “discriminate less than humans.”

## Personal life

Sonderling met his wife, Fara, at a Jewish outreach event for Jeb Bush's 2016 presidential campaign, on whose national Jewish leadership committee he served. They married in 2019 in Jerusalem. Introducing him at a February 27, 2025, Senate hearing, Rick Scott described Fara as from Aventura, Florida.

She has worked in government affairs. In an ethics agreement dated February 4, 2025, Sonderling reported that his spouse worked for the American Forest & Paper Association at a fixed annual salary plus a performance bonus, and he agreed to recuse himself from party-specific matters involving the association while she remained employed there. An annual financial disclosure he signed on April 20, 2026, listed association salary among his spouse's employment income. In May 2025, Florida Politics named her a partner in Converge Public Strategies' new federal affairs practice in Washington. On October 5, 2026, Continental Strategy announced that she had joined the firm as vice president, describing her most recent title as senior director at Converge after nearly eight years at the forest-products association and earlier work at the National Community Pharmacists Association and the American Legislative Exchange Council. The same biography says she was born and raised in Aventura, holds a bachelor's degree in politics from Mount Holyoke College and a master's in public policy from Brown University, and lives in Falls Church, Virginia, with her husband and two sons.

The Department of Labor biography states that Sonderling and Fara have two sons. At the February 2025 hearing he called her his "No. 1 supporter" and said their sons, then a three-year-old and a two-month-old, were at home. In his written opening statement as nominee for secretary of labor, he thanked Fara, their two sons, and his parents, Howard and Barbara, whom Scott identified as from Boca Raton, Florida. His 2026 disclosure listed Falls Church as the location of a consulting sole proprietorship he operated from November 2024 to January 2025.

Before moving to Washington in 2017, he had been involved with the Jewish Federation in Palm Beach County. In 2025 Senate testimony he described himself as the grandchild of Holocaust survivors and said that family history shaped his interest in protecting workers from religious discrimination. As a commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, he told a November 2023 webinar of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington that people do not "check their anti-Jewish attitudes at the door" when they enter work.

## Dated facts

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## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/keith-sonderling