Proposed bill: No more DEI offices, ‘differential treatment’ of students at KY’s public colleges

Kentucky’s public colleges and universities would have to defund all Diversity, Equity and Inclusion offices and trainings, eliminate race-based scholarships and end administrative promotion or justification of so-called “discriminatory concepts” like white privilege under a Republican-backed bill filed Friday.

House Bill 9, introduced by Rep. Jennifer Decker, R-Waddy, would bar public post-secondary institutions from providing any “differential” or “preferential” treatment to a student or employee based on race, religion, sex, color or national origin.

That includes through any office, programming or training on diversity, equity and inclusion — also known as DEI — which has become a frequent target of conservatives nationwide.

In a news release accompanying the bill, Decker called DEI initiatives “misguided” and said they “made college more divided, more expensive and less tolerant.”

Diversity, equity and inclusion offices on campuses are designed to support marginalized or underrepresented student populations by fostering a more inclusive college experience, college administrators and experts say.

The University of Kentucky’s Office of Institutional Diversity, for example, says on its website it serves to “enhance the diversity and inclusivity of our university community through the recruitment and retention of an increasingly diverse population of faculty, administrators, staff and students.”

And UK does this, the office says, “by implementing initiatives that provide rich diversity-related experiences for all to help ensure their success in an interconnected world.”

“If education is to be the great equalizer in the commonwealth, the opportunity to obtain a college degree in our state must be equally available and affordable to all,” Decker said in a news release.

“HB 9 would allow our universities and colleges to return their focus to providing Kentucky students with excellent academic instruction in an environment that fosters critical thinking through constructive dialogue.”

A handful of states with Republican majorities have passed anti-DEI bills in recent years, perhaps most notably in Florida.

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Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor and presidential hopeful, signed into law a sweeping bill limiting DEI initiatives on college campuses earlier this year. At the time, DeSantis mockingly said DEI should stand for “discrimination, exclusion and indoctrination.”

Decker’s bill includes provisions intended to limit its reach into the classroom and more pointedly target university administration. It states that nothing in the bill shall be construed to limit academic freedom, academic course material, research or compliance with federal and state laws or court orders.

However, the bill would affect many facets of university life in Kentucky.

It codifies a ban on “manipulating or influencing” the composition of a student body on the basis of race, religion, sex, color or national origin. That comports with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling last year that held that race-based affirmative action admissions programs are unconstitutional.

Decker’s proposed legislation also targets “discriminatory concepts.” Those are defined as “presenting as truth, rather than as a subject for inquiry, that an existing structure system or relation of power, privilege or subordination persists on the basis of oppression, colonialism, socioeconomic status, religion, race, sex, color, or national origin.”

The bill would bar public colleges and universities from the following:

• Any providing of “differential treatment” or benefits based on race, sex, color, religion or national origin.

• Any manipulation of the student body based on the above.

• Any scholarship criteria based on the above

• Prioritization of vendors based on race, sex, color, religion or national origin.

• Housing assignments based on race, sex, color, religion or national origin.

• Establishing or maintaining DEI offices, employing DEI workers and providing DEI trainings.

• Investigating “bias incidents,” which references an act of bias against a particular group or towards an individual because of their membership in a particular group, excluding student-on-student harassment or an incident an institution is legally required to investigate.

• Requiring students to enroll in courses that promote “discriminatory concepts,” or requiring or incentivizing faculty to attend DEI training or permitting credit from a course dedicated to “discriminatory concepts” or DEI from counting toward credits needed to graduate.

The University of Kentucky has its own such entity called the Office for Institutional Diversity. It would be terminated under the bill. It is unclear how many positions would be cut under the bill, though Decker said that through her own research she identified 192 employees at the University of Louisville alone as people who “had some DEI associated with their names.”

The bill also would disallow public colleges or universities from “requiring any individual to endorse or condemn a specific political or social ideology.”

In an interview with the Herald-Leader Friday morning, Decker said she had not spoken with representatives from any state college or university about her bill, but she called their DEI initiatives “failed policy.”

“It’s causing our campuses to be very divided, it’s causing them to be very expensive, and it’s just a failed policy of attempting to create inclusion feelings,” she said. “I can’t find a metric that shows that what ever these offices are doing has had a positive impact on enrollment. We want to return our schools to their core mission of educating Kentucky students with an affordable education.”

Decker is an attorney and nonprofit administrator from Shelby County.

Prior to joining the legislature in 2020, she served as a field representative for U.S. Senator Rand Paul. In 2023, she was the sponsor of a bill that banned gender-affirming care for minors, House Bill 470. Portions of that bill became law with the eventual passage of Senate Bill 150.

Two additional bills aimed at restricting DEI practices in public schools across the state have already been filed this session by Republicans. But none except for Decker’s seeks to dismantle and defund DEI offices.

Senate Bill 6 from Sen. Mike Wilson, R-Bowling Green, would limit DEI initiatives at public colleges and universities by way of “non-credit classes, seminars, workshops, trainings and orientations.”

The bill would ban any administrative initiative that promotes “divisive concepts,” such as “race or sex scapegoating,” a belief that some individuals are “inherently privileged,” or suggestions that all “Americans are not created equal.”

Senate Bill 93, filed by Sen. Stephen Meredith, R-Leitchfield, would prevent public K-12 schools, districts and charter schools from promoting, supporting or maintaining any “programs, trainings or activities that advocate for diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging, or promote or engage in political or social activism.”

Such activities, according to the bill, include any topics that “polarize or divide society among political, ideological, moral or religious beliefs.”

Meredith’s bill also proposes nixing statutory requirements that school mental health counselors take a “trauma-informed approach” when supporting students, because such an approach is a “backdoor” to a “DEI agenda.”