Bill to ban DEI efforts at Kentucky public colleges advances after tense committee meeting
Championing it as a measure promoting “equal opportunity” on Kentucky’s higher education campuses rather than the “subjective equity” contrived by diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, a Republican-backed bill to dismantle DEI advanced in a party-line committee vote Tuesday.
House Bill 4 is “a bill that would ensure our post-secondary system in Kentucky is held accountable to dismantle the failed and misguided DEI bureaucracies that have made our colleges more divided, more expensive and less tolerant,” Waddy Republican Rep. Jennifer Decker, lead sponsor of the bill, told the House Post-secondary Education Committee Tuesday morning.
“Historically, America has strived for equal opportunity, not subjective equity, which DEI now pursues through discriminatory admissions, hiring and scholarships,” Decker added.
Her bill proposes defunding all DEI initiatives, including offices, policies, and practices “designed to implemented to promote or provide preferential treatment or benefits to individuals on the basis of religion, sex, color, or national origin.” It wouldn’t apply to the operations of an institution’s Equal Protection offices.
A DEI office under the bill is one that promotes “discriminatory concepts,” which are defined as “any concept that justifies or promotes differential treatment or benefits” to an individual based on the aforementioned traits — treatment Decker described during Tuesday’s hearing as “unconstitutional.”
What’s considered DEI training under the bill “does not include academic courses or instruction.”
But the bill does bar “indoctrination,” including any course or training students or staff are required to participate in where “the primary purpose is to indoctrinate participants with a discriminatory concept.”
In addition to prohibiting universities from spending any money on these initiatives and requiring those institutions to close DEI offices and eliminate all related staff by June 30, 2025, it would also block universities from requiring students or staff to sign a diversity statement, attend a DEI training session, or complete an academic course “dedicated to the promotion of differential treatment or benefits conferred to individuals on the basis of religion, race, sex, color or national origin.”
The version of Decker’s bill advanced by Republicans Tuesday morning was a revised version of the one she filed last month.
Decker removed language that previously outlined an individual’s civil cause of action that could be taken against a university that violates the bill, should it be passed into law. But she added language that allows the Auditor of Public Accounts to conduct periodic “compliance audits” of colleges and universities.
If the auditor determines one of those institutions “spent money in violation” of the law, that college or university would have to comply within 180 days, or risk becoming ineligble for federal formula funding increases.
“We set up the institutions; we need to oversee the institutions,” Decker said in explaining her rationale for this new section of the bill. “We need to instruct them when they are doing things that are outside the policy of our state and the Constitution of the United States, and that set us up for liability.
“So, whether this bill has a private right of action or not, there is a private right of action in federal court that will be followed, I’m sure, with an open portal for reporting. We want to stop that in our state.”
‘Where’s the line?’
This session’s anti-DEI proposal is a revived, more surgical version of a bill Decker proposed in the 2024 legislative session that ultimately failed to become law.
But it’s a proposal bolstered under the new administration of Republican President Donald Trump, a critic of DEI initiatives. On his first day in office, Trump dismantled federal DEI programs under an executive order, saying such initiatives have “demonstrated immense public waste.”
That was a message echoed by Decker.
“DEI policies have cost Kentucky taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars over the last 14 years — a period which Kentucky campuses have also experienced a dramatic drop in overall enrollment of students and a dramatic loss in enrollment of low-income students,” Decker said Tuesday.
But data from the Council on Postsecondary Education shows enrollment across all public universities in Kentucky and the Kentucky Community and Technical College System has grown each year since 2021, including underrepresented minority enrollment. Low income enrollment has decreased in recent years, although increased in the 2023-24 school year.
Opposition to the bill from committee Democrats and four members of the public who were allowed to speak, while clipped, was tense.
After members of the audience clapped at comments made by a Democrat, committee Chairman James Tipton, R-Taylorsville, threatened to have security remove members of the public if they expressed vocal support for testimony.
Rep. Lisa Willner, a Louisville Democrat, pushed back on linking DEI with a drop in enrollment.
“We’re directly blaming DEI on the drop in under-served student bodies — that’s really a leap, to imply or assume causation,” Willner said. “If the diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives are leaving some folks out, why don’t we make these more inclusive rather than get rid of them?”
“I’ve never said it caused it,” Decker shot back. “I’ve never said DEI is the cause of that drop. But the truth is, DEI was meant to improve it, especially for minority students, and it has failed. It is quite simply astonishing to me that proponents of diversity still advocate for a DEI system on our campuses that has failed, based on enrollment numbers.
“In my household, if I were paying a large amount for something to help something not happen, and then it happened for 14 years, I would stop that spending. I would be disgusted by the outcomes I was not getting for what I was paying for.
“But proponents of DEI seem satisfied and say, let’s just keep paying for it, even though it failed for 14 years.”
Rep. Rachel Roarx, D-Louisville, called House Bill 4 “both impractical and overreaching,” and said it “opens our universities up to frivolous lawsuits.”
Due to time constraints, only four members of the public were allowed to speak, all in opposition of the bill, before the committee voted.
Micah Lynn, a master’s student at the University of Kentucky studying history, asked how the bill defines discriminatory concepts, particularly if they’re taught in courses required by a university.
“I research racial violence, and I lead recitations for an introductory American history class. My students maturely talk about tough subjects like Jim Crow and lynching. We can talk about tough subjects and they understand it’s not an indictment of their character, (or) of them as people,” Lynn said.
He read aloud a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. that he teachers: “’A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for the Negro.’
“Could I teach that quote? Could I support or endorse statements by Martin Luther King, Jr.?” Lynn asked.
“I’m concerned about the chilling effect that’s going to be had on other educators and myself discussing race in the classroom,” Lynn added. “And you may say it’s absurd, I can teach about that, but where’s the line?”
