GOP-controlled House in Kentucky votes to defund DEI offices at public universities
FRANKFORT, Ky. — The Kentucky House voted Friday to choke off funding for diversity, equity and inclusion offices at public universities following an impassioned debate that had a GOP lawmaker dismissing DEI efforts as a failure and Democrats defending them as pillars of support for students from underrepresented groups.
The overhauled bill passed the House by a vote of 68-18, sending it back to the Senate, which passed a much different version. House members stripped away the Senate’s language and inserted a replacement that takes a tougher stand on DEI initiatives at public university campuses. The Senate will decide in coming days whether to accept the new version. The GOP has supermajorities in both chambers.
The effort to roll back DEI initiatives in Kentucky is part of a much broader Republican campaign featuring bills in several states that would restrict such initiatives or require their disclosure.
In Kentucky, the Housepassed version would ban race-based scholarships and defund DEI offices and staff positions. It would prohibit the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education, which oversees public universities, from approving degrees that require courses containing “discriminatory concepts.”
And it would hold universities accountable to “dismantle the misguided DEI bureaucracies,” said Republican state Rep. Jennifer Decker, who shepherded the new version to House passage.
“This bill would put an end to the failed, expensive and discriminatory DEI initiatives at our public post-secondary schools in Kentucky,” Decker said at the outset of debate.
While she insisted the bill would foster a culture that’s “inclusive and welcoming to all,” Democrats said it would hurt minority students on campuses. That includes racial minorities and LGBTQ students but also can be people who are disabled, from rural areas or from low-income families.
“Diversity, equity and inclusion programs are about creating and sustaining environments that support students and faculty who have been traditionally underrepresented on our college campuses, that make them feel safe and welcome,” said Democratic state Rep. Nima Kulkarni.
The sweeping bill also threatens to stifle concepts that professors can teach, opponents said.
“It would disallow the teaching of how oppressive governments create systems of inequality through laws and policies that are structured to marginalize minority groups,” Kulkarni said. “Our students deserve to know our history. They deserve to fully explore all of the progress that we have made.”
Democrats said the backlash to the bill could include boycotts, students leaving the state for college and perhaps hurt efforts to recruit Black student-athletes.
In condemning the bill, Democratic state Rep. Cherlynn Stevenson warned that it sends the message to prospective recruits that “we don’t want you to learn about your heritage” but “we’re sure going to use your athletic abilities to further our institutions.”