Anti-DEI bill cracking down on ‘unlawful discrimination’ en route to governor’s desk

A bill to limit diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in schools, state government and health profession licensing advanced to the governor Thursday following a 64-26 vote in the House and a 34-16 tally in the Senate.

Senate Bill 289 — authored by Republican Sens. Tyler Johnson of Leo, and Gary Byrne of Byrneville — was tweaked in the final days of the session to specifically outlaw “discrimination” in state education, public employment and licensing settings that is “based on a personal characteristic of the person.”

Lawmakers also made last-minute changes to characteristics outlined in the bill, removing “disability and status as a veteran” from the list. The “personal characteristics” remaining in the bill are “race, religion, color, sex, national origin, or ancestry.”

“You can’t fix discrimination with discrimination,” Byrne said. “This bill is good for Indiana, and everybody should be judged by how hard you work — and that’s what this bill is about.”

The latest draft exempts “employment action(s) concerning participation in a public contract by a minority business enterprise, women’s business enterprise, or veteran business enterprise, if the employment action is authorized by law.”

A carveout also exists for colleges and universities. Schools can also make decisions around grants, scholarships or fee remissions on the basis of “personal characteristic(s)” as long as those awards do not include any “state funds or resources.”

But state offices and universities would not be allowed to require employees to complete training — or licensing — “asserting that, or endorsing the theory that,” a person with a certain personal characteristic:

• is inherently superior or inferior to a person with a different personal characteristic;
• should be blamed for actions committed in the past;
• or has a moral character that is determined by a personal characteristic of the person.

Opposition remained

Democrats remained opposed to the bill on Thursday — particularly in the Senate, where debate lasted nearly two hours.

“In a utopia, every human should be treated equally and should not be discriminated against based on their race, their gender, their creed, their nationality, their political identity,” said Sen. Fady Qaddoura, D-Indianapolis. “But this legislation is extremely harmful because it gives a blind eye to historical injustices by which generations of communities have been discriminated against.”

“It flips the script by saying we have no discrimination, we have no racism, and we should treat everybody equally. It ignores historical facts that continue to occur until this moment,” he continued. “This legislation ignores that people have different starting points in their lives, and in most of our history as a country, it was our government that pushed people behind the starting line.”

The legislation’s passage comes on the heels of Gov. Mike Braun’s executive order to replace DEI throughout state government policies and programming with “merit, excellence and innovation,” or MEI.