College DEI programs survive as clock runs out on KY Republican supermajority

In a stunning development in Kentucky’s Republican-controlled legislature, a controversial bill to dismantle and defund diversity, equity and inclusion offices at public colleges and universities died Thursday night as the 2024 regular legislative session neared its end.

The latest version of Senate Bill 6, initially filed by Senate Majority Whip Mike Wilson, R-Bowling Green, would have prohibited public higher education institutions from allocating resources to fund DEI offices and individual staff positions if they were in any way charged with “implementing or promoting” DEI outside the context of academic courses and classroom instruction.

The bill repeatedly referred to DEI practices as “discriminatory concepts.”

Just before midnight, the Senate adjourned without agreeing to the sweeping changes the House of Representatives made to one of its priority bills earlier this month.

That means the Senate missed a crucial deadline that all but ensures the anti-DEI measure is dead this legislative session.

The 10-day veto recess begins Friday. Any bills passed on the final two days of the session in April — the 12th and 15th — could be vetoed by Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear, leaving the adjourned legislature unable to override him.

Beshear has repeatedly affirmed his support for diversity, calling anti-DEI bills a political “bogeyman” and signaling he would veto any anti-DEI measure that reached his desk.

Why did momentum on the bill stall?

Senate GOP leaders had little to say about intra-caucus discussions about the bill, which changed drastically in the House compared to the initial version sent over by the Senate.

Leadership did mention that the votes within the Republican caucus weren’t there to pass the bill.

“It’s been contentious within our caucus, and that’s about all I can say – that’s all I will say,” Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, said.

When asked, Majority Floor Leader Damon Thayer, R-Georgetown, was also mum about what exactly held the bill up during the caucus meeting Thursday evening.

“Nope,” he told the Herald-Leader. “That’s revealing what happens in a closed caucus discussion, and I’m not going to do that.”

Thayer and Stivers said they hadn’t discussed the possibility of passing the bill after the veto break when it will be vulnerable to a veto from Beshear.

House Speaker David Osborne, R-Prospect, said there “was just a disagreement in languages.”

“With neither side really willing to to give substantively on it, there was no compromise reached,” he said.

Senate Minority Whip David Yates, D-Louisville, said he was “relieved” that SB 6 wasn’t called for a vote.

“I think through open, honest debate and education, it lost support from many of the colleagues that had otherwise championed it,” Yates said. “I think when there wasn’t the votes to pass it, the decision was made not to call (it). We continued, from the very beginning, to rally against it, to educate on the negative effects of how its used, and then also look at what’s happened in other states that have moved forward with other models.”

Kentucky seemed ripe for passage of such a measure, as anti-DEI bills similar to SB 6 have increasingly found reliable allies in conservatives across the country. In total, 81 bills regulating diversity, equity and inclusion have been filed in 28 states since 2023 — 11 of which have become law — according to the Chronicle of Higher Education’s DEI legislation tracker.

Backers of those bills have posed arguments similar to those from Kentucky Republicans: colleges and universities have become breeding grounds for “liberal ideologies,” as Wilson put it, and DEI a ruse to push that agenda, which has led to discrimination of the conservative viewpoint. By dismantling these offices and banning such concepts, it would actually truly diversify campuses, they argue.

As Wilson said when he filed his bill in January, “our public universities have been plagued by a new form of discrimination,” one driven by by “ideologies attempting to suppress free speech and ideological diversity, undermine academic freedom and the principle of equal opportunity, devalue academic and professional merits, and reduce the values of diversity to a bureaucratic exercise.”

Rep. Jennifer Decker, R-Waddy, who commandeered the bill away from Wilson earlier this month in a committee substitute, said universities need to purge DEI from their campuses, calling such initiatives “failed policy,” “misguided,” and making “college more divided, more expensive and less tolerant.”

But the majority party in the Senate chose not to vote on the bill by the deadline Thursday, leaving DEI offices on campuses untouched and operational this year.

What would the bills have done?

Wilson’s initial SB 6 didn’t call for dismantling DEI offices, but proposed a prohibition on “discriminatory concepts” in non-classroom settings, like training sessions and orientations. Those concepts included “race scapegoating,” a belief that some individuals are “inherently privileged,” and any suggestion that “Americans are not created equal.”

Decker’s version of SB 6 also swapped Wilson’s definition of “discriminatory concepts” for more vaguely-defined ones to include any topic that is presented “as truth, rather than a subject of inquiry” that, for example, intrinsic inequities exist within “an existing structure, system or relation of power” because of “oppression, colonialism, socioeconomic status, religion, race, sex, color or national origin.”

SB 6 was one of three anti-DEI bills filed this session, all by Republicans.

In addition to defunding DEI offices, universities would have been barred from providing DEI training, or from fronting any cost associated with an employee traveling to attend a DEI training.

The bill would’ve also outlawed race-based scholarships and prohibited universities from showing “differential” or “preferential” treatment to a student or employee based on race, religion, sex, color or national origin. It also proposed banning diversity statements from students or staff, affirming their belief and work toward a diverse, equitable and inclusive environment.

After the bills were filed, public universities around the state said they would remain committed to diversity on campus. Several said they do not use practices mentioned in the bills, like “diversity statements” where students or employees are asked to sign a statement affirming their belief in or work toward a diverse and inclusive campus.

University of Kentucky President Eli Capilouto spoke out strongly against the anti-DEI bills in February, calling them “deeply concerning.” Capilouto said he spoke with lawmakers, expressing concerns about the impact such bills could have on campus.

“The truth is that our world and our state are changing,” Capilouto said in February. “We are growing more diverse. Indeed, we must, if our state is to grow economically. We should embrace that change and harness the opportunities it presents, not shrink from it.”

Herald-Leader reporter Monica Kast contributed to this story.