JACKSON, ma’am. — Diversity initiatives would be stripped or banned from universities and other public institutions under a series of bills pending in Republican-led legislatures, with some lawmakers counting on the issue to resonate with voters in this election year.
This year, Republican lawmakers in 20 states have already introduced about 50 bills that would limit or require disclosure of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives — known as DEI, according to an Associated Press analysis using the software for following bills Plural.
This is the second year that Republican-led state governments have focused on DEI. This year’s bills, as well as executive orders and internal agency guidelines, again focus heavily on higher education. But the legislation would also restrict DEI in K-12 schools, state governments, contracts and pension investments. Some bills would prevent financial institutions from discriminating against those who refuse to participate in DEI programs.
Meanwhile, Democrats in eleven states have introduced about two dozen bills that would require or promote DEI initiatives. The bills cover a broad spectrum, including measures to reverse Florida’s recent ban on DEI in higher education and measures to require DEI considerations in Washington state elementary school curricula.
The June Supreme Court decision to end affirmative action in universities has created a new legal landscape around diversity programs in the workplace and in civil society.
But DEI’s rise as a political rallying cry has its roots on campus, with Republican opponents saying the programs are discriminatory and promote left-wing ideology. Democratic supporters say the programs are needed to ensure institutions meet the needs of increasingly diverse student populations.
Republican Sen. Rob Standridge of Oklahoma, who has authored four bills to gut DEI programs in the state, said it has become a salient campaign issue.
“I think it’s become more of a political issue,” Standridge said. “In other words, people use it in a positive way in their campaigns. So now maybe the people who didn’t care about it before are suddenly like, “Wait a minute, I can use this on a flyer next year. And Trump is bringing light to it too.”
The organizations helping to advance the conservative agenda say DEI’s rise to the center of political debate makes their crusade against it ripe for expansion.
“This has opened a window of opportunity, and we don’t want that window to close,” Mike Gonzalez, a fellow at the powerful conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, said in an interview. “We want to approach this window with a robust policy agenda.”
In South Carolina, Rep. Josiah Magnuson, who introduced legislation to restrict DEI, said the issue reflects a growing sentiment among Republican lawmakers that ideologies unfavorable to conservatives are growing with the help of campus bureaucracies.
“We’re finding that our colleges and universities have gone off the rails quite a bit, and we need to get them back in line,” Magnuson said. “And so I think this is also a growing push to take control of our state universities.”
Not all Republicans agree on which government approach is best suited to eliminating DEI.
In Oklahoma, Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt signed an executive order in December banning state agencies and universities from spending money on the programs. Standridge said it is not clear what authority the order would have because Oklahoma universities are regulated by the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, not the governor’s office.
“I appreciate the executive order, but it may not really have the authority to force the schools to do anything,” Standridge said. do something about DEI.”
For Washington State Senator Marko Liias, DEI is crucial to serving a diverse society. Liias introduced a bill in the Democratic-controlled Legislature in 2023 to weave DEI concepts into the state’s K-12 learning standards. The bill, which will be considered again in 2024, is intended to meet the needs of a diversifying student population, he said.
“I think the opposition is organized around a political agenda as I try to respond to the diverse community I represent and the experiences they bring to me,” Liias said. “So it’s kind of reality versus theory, what’s happening in our families and schools versus an agenda driven by national foundations. That is the gap.”
Republican-led Florida and Texas were the first states to pass broad laws banning DEI efforts in higher education. Since then, other state leaders have followed suit.
“The idea to examine how much we spend on DEI came from seeing what other states were doing. Particularly Ron DeSantis in Florida,” said Republican Shad White, Mississippi’s state auditor.
In a 2023 report, White said Mississippi’s public universities spend millions on DEI programs instead of scholarships.
In the opening weeks of the 2024 Mississippi session, Rep. Becky Currie introduced a bill that would implement sweeping bans not only on DEI offices, but also on the funding of campus activities deemed “social activism.” The bill has been referred to a committee of the House of Representatives. Currie declined to be interviewed.
Utah Governor Spencer Cox signed a bill into law on January 30 that makes the state the latest law to ban diversity training, hiring and inclusion programs at universities and in state government. Cox has called the use of diversity statements in hiring “bordering on evil.”
Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin struck a narrowly approved deal with regents in December to allow the state’s public university system to limit diversity positions on its 20 campuses. Speaker Robin Vos, a Republican, later said he had only just begun to abolish “cancerous DEI practices” and called for a review of diversity initiatives within state government.
The crackdown on DEI is part of the same legislative project as the earlier movement to curb academic and legal ideas called critical race theory, said Jonathan Butcher, an education policy researcher for The Heritage Foundation.
Critical race theory is a way of thinking about American history based on the idea that racism is systemic in the country’s institutions.
“There is no separation. DEI is the application of critical race theory. DEI agents are the administrative control panels that put critical race theory into practice,” Butcher said.
Rep. Fentrice Driskell, the Democratic House minority leader in Florida, thinks the ideological motive behind restricting DEI is intertwined with an economic agenda that downplays the role of identity in exacerbating inequality.
“It’s a flashpoint because conservatives like to talk about meritocracy as their vision for a society where everyone can progress,” Driskell said. “Real life is actually more complicated than that. And that is what DEI programs are designed to solve.”
___
Associated Press writers Trisha Ahmed in Minneapolis, David Lieb in Jefferson City, Missouri, Hannah Schoenbaum in Salt Lake City and Todd Richmond in Madison, Wisconsin, contributed to this story.
___
Michael Goldberg is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.