More details are coming to light about Utah Republican lawmakers’ efforts to restrict diversity, equity and inclusion practices.

A newly filed bill in the Utah Legislature is expected to change the mission of diversity, equity and inclusion offices in public universities to make their services available to all students, including those at risk, rather than focusing on minority populations.

The bill, HB261, would also ban all public schools, universities and governmental employers from having “discriminatory practices” based on “personal identity characteristics” including “race, color, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, religion or gender identity.”

Additionally, the bill aims to ensure Utah’s schools, universities and government workplaces “remain neutral on political issues” and “protect freedom of speech” by requiring institutions to “establish policies and procedures to include opportunities for education and research on free speech and civic education,” according to the bill.

While the bill’s sponsors say they’re not looking to cut current DEI funding, the bill could have major implications for how those offices currently function and how many students would be eligible for their services.

The legislation would also bar public entities — including colleges, K-12 schools, and state and local agencies — from using DEI questions or statements in hiring or admissions.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Katy Hall, R-South Ogden, in the House and Sen. Keith Grover, R-Provo, in the Senate, was released Thursday and is expected to surface for debate perhaps as soon as the first week of the 2024 legislative session, scheduled to convene on Tuesday.

This is expected to be Republicans’ flagship DEI-related legislation of the session, Grover said. It has the backing of powerful legislative leaders at the helm of the state’s Republican supermajority.

“This has the eyes of leadership,” Grover said, adding that it’s also a Republican caucus priority for both the House and Senate.

“It’s a priority and we want to make sure we get public input” in committee hearings in both the House and Senate, he said.

Hall pushed a bill focused on restricting DEI statements in the 2023 session, but it did not pass.

The debate around DEI is likely to be one of the most hotly contested issues during the 2024 Utah Legislature — and it’s an issue that’s drawn debate around the nation. Critics of DEI policies claim they give certain groups of people — people of color, women, LGBTQ+ people and other groups who have been historically underrepresented — an unfair advantage. Proponents of the programs say they’re meant to increase opportunities for minority populations and affirm differences so all types of people feel welcome, have equal opportunities and are included.

“Everyone is concerned about diversity and inclusion,” Hall said. “But … in order to gain that we can’t be discriminatory in order to achieve that.”

Grover said, “I really think this is the DEI bill that should have been drafted 20 years ago” to avoid excluding certain people while trying to benefit others.

While Hall and Grover have worked on drafting the bill, powerful Utah Republican players have expressed their appetite to change DEI practices. When asked about DEI practices during his December PBS Utah news conference, Gov. Spencer Cox said “these diversity statements that you have to sign to get hired, I think that’s awful, I mean, bordering on evil that we’re forcing people into a political framework before they can even apply for a job.”

It’s “good” that minority kids “are actually going to college at higher rates than ever before in our state’s history,” the governor said, but there is still a “gap” when it comes to completion rates. Meanwhile, Cox said “there are too many white kids that are starting college and not finishing.”

“When it comes to starting college and finishing college, men have dropped off a cliff over the past 20 years,” Cox said. “We don’t talk about it much anymore because it used to be the other way (around) between men and women. … Now it’s completely flipped, and so we should be very worried about that.”

However, Grover and Hall said their bill isn’t meant to specifically target trends related to white men. When asked if there’s a specific group of people they feel are being excluded through current DEI practices, Grover said, “it’s not specific groups, it’s more like individuals being excluded.”

“Some will sit on the sidelines, sit on their hands because they don’t feel like they belong to a certain group, because they maybe belong to disparate groups,” Grover said. “They may not have a certain ideology, but also a certain gender or race. And by nature that excludes them.”

After Cox’s comments against DEI statements, Taylor Randall, president of the University of Utah, wrote in an email to his Leadership Council that all hiring units at the university “should discontinue the use of any type of diversity statements or similar practices as part of their unit-level applicant or employee hiring processes.” The Utah Board of Higher Education, meanwhile, decided to eliminate questions or statements on diversity while hiring in public colleges.

Jeanetta Williams, president of the NAACP Salt Lake Branch who is also running for a Utah House seat, said she’s concerned about the bill, arguing DEI statements can help ensure prospective employees understand the goals and importance of DEI initiatives and can help institutions avoid discrimination issues. She also said employment isn’t contingent on signing DEI statements.

“In order to have a DEI program that actually works and knowing what is being expected or the thoughts of an individual when they’re looking to hire will have an impact on DEI,” she said, adding that colleges “have the responsibility to make sure that we do not condone any type of harassment, any type of discrimination and any kinds of racial issues that happen.”

What would the bill entail?

Grover said “the main focus of this bill” will be on what he and Hall called “student success centers” in universities, with an intention of “creating a space where all students can get help on their student success goals at the universities, regardless of who they are.”

The bill would change current DEI offices to these “student success centers” so they “capture everyone that’s at risk on college campuses,” Grover said. The centers will “make sure they have the resources they need to succeed academically.”

“We need anyone that’s at risk to understand that they have access to additional services based on whatever socioeconomic situation they came from or whatever it might be,” Grover said.

Under the bill, any students currently receiving on-campus DEI services would not experience any changes, Grover said, and any at-risk students would have access to additional services based on their socioeconomic situation.

Currently, the University of Utah’s Equity, Diversity and and Inclusion office defines equity as a way to ensure fair treatment and provide the same opportunities to all students, faculty, trainees and staff. Though the office embraces identity traits cited in the bill, such as race, ethnicity, gender, age, religion, sexuality and socioeconomic status, it doesn’t limit its definition of diversity, according to its website.

Overall, the university’s strategies center on affirming and supporting people’s identities and fostering “a climate that is equitable and inclusive of the diverse bodies represented throughout our community by consistently assessing university policies, programs, and practices so that everyone can thrive,” the office’s website reads.

Among other programs, the office searches for long-term and sustainable outcomes where “the effects of injustices are uprooted” and develops institutional policies, practices, and programs that eliminate health inequities. It also holds cultural, religious and health-related events, handles bias incident reports, and has resource and cultural centers for people with disabilities, Native Americans, Black and undocumented students.

If offices need to expand their services to adhere to the bill, institutions would need to go through a normal appropriations process, Grover said. They would have the option to enhance their current “student success offices,” modify them, or create a new one, he said.

The proposal would also direct universities to help educate the entire student body to determine if they need these resources.

Newly elected House Speaker Mike Schultz said during a press availability on Wednesday the bill isn’t meant to slash DEI programs.

“We’re not defunding it. We’re reshaping the way DEI offices look. We’re not getting rid of the programs in general,” Shultz, R-Hooper, said.

Some parts of current DEI programs could be expanded, Schultz said, in an attempt to create what he called “an opportunity-driven process with initiatives that help all, any at-risk student.”

Why Utah lawmakers have DEI statements in their crosshairs

The issue with DEI statements, Grover said, is that people may have different ideas of what’s diverse and that “by nature becomes exclusive,” because those making hiring and admissions decisions may have biases that play into the process.

Hall said she’s uncertain about how often the statements are used in applications. But, Grover said any instances are unacceptable.

“If it’s 0.25%, it’s too much. I’m being serious. It just doesn’t matter. We don’t need to have a threshold,” Grover said. “If it’s my child and I’m in one of those groups, and they’re being marginalized … Excuse me, that’s one too many.”

Utah public colleges are predominantly white, according to data from the Utah System of Higher Education. But Grover argued minority populations on college campuses “exceed” the proportion of minority populations in the state as a whole. That is true for Hispanics and those who identify with two or more races, according to census data, but not for all ethnic groups.

“You will see more diversity on any of our college campuses than you would see in a traditional Utah community, if you will,” he said.

Democrats including House Minority Leader Angela Romero, D-Salt Lake City, have said that DEI questions have been useful in hiring for fields such as health care, as it’s important that “the people we are hiring understand the history of diverse individuals and the things that come with that.”

As Utah becomes increasingly diverse, “I don’t see (diversity statements) as a deficit, I see it as a way of identifying people who have experience working with diverse populations, or if they don’t, training them on how to work with diverse populations,” Romero recently told Utah News Dispatch.

To those comments, Hall, who also works as a nurse, said that everyone in health care should learn about all different types of races and their unique health risks in general, adding that nursing school students are taught that.

After Hall’s bill restricting DEI statements failed in a Senate committee last year, she said several professors of various political leanings and the conservative minority group Path Forward Utah reached out to her during the interim session to tell her she’s on the right track.

Hall said lawmakers are concerned about the lack of diversity in viewpoints throughout the colleges and the ability to have open conversations among students and within faculty, who she said are “classically liberal.”

“Our universities used to be these bastions of free speech where people could go and bounce their ideas off and bounce their beliefs off and have hard conversations, robustly hard conversations,” she said. “And it’s not happening anymore.”

Democratic lawmakers as a caucus are against the efforts to try to remove inclusion efforts in higher education, said Rep. Mark Archuleta Wheatley, D-Murray, since DEI programs promote a more inclusive and equitable environment in higher education.

The policies, Wheatley said, help mitigate historical disparities and systemic biases.

“Having a diverse faculty and staff is critical for providing role models and mentors for students from underrepresented groups,” Wheatley said, adding that often these efforts have translated into enriching universities with different skill sets.

He would like to see more discussion on whether DEI policies are hurting students, he said.

“Individuals see color. And a lot of individuals are not familiar with working with different segments of our population.”

Ultimately, he said, Utah shouldn’t be following national agendas. He believes the Legislature should be focusing on other issues, such as the bad air quality that plagues the Salt Lake Valley and the high cost of health care.

A national trend?

Grover rejected the notion that Republican lawmakers are following a national culture war trend. The need stems from concerns from people at Utah colleges, he said.

“If we’re going to do the national trend, which is classically saying, ‘We don’t like DEI, let’s do away with that,’ Rep. Hall could present a bill tomorrow and it would pass politically,” he said. “That’s lazy. That’s lazy legislation, it’s not doing the hard work.”

Grover said that DEI efforts were “fantastic” when they were introduced in the past (The DEI field emerged from the 1960s Civil Rights Movement). However, he said, “I think what we’ve drifted into this nationally, whatever it is, is this redefinition of terms, they become more isolating, insular and not broad. … The language of this bill gets back to the standards of everyone included.”

To Anna Thomas, policy director at Voices for Utah Children, this is not a “good faith” discussion, but “an attempt to dismantle an imperfect approach to making our institutions a little more modern, maybe getting them to prioritize different people over the same people who have had access to money and influence for generations.”

She challenged the idea that the legislation comes from concerns on Utah campuses, as other states are running similar bills across the country. Also, she said she hasn’t seen evidence of how current DEI policies could be divisive or harmful.

“While Voices for Utah Children will oppose these bills because they are not good public policy,” she said, “we want to be really clear that this is an argument that’s being manufactured by people who don’t want to talk about other things that are much, much more important to Utah families and Utah community members.”

DEI in the private sector

There’s another bill looming that could be broader than Hall and Grover’s, extending beyond the public sector.

Rep. Tim Jimenez, R-Tooele, is running HB111, a bill that would bar private and public employers from requiring its staff to check a box or sign any documents stating that they agree with any particular views on race, sex or gender.

“I don’t want to put people in a situation where they have to view a group differently in order to be employed,” Jimenez said. “I think there’s nothing worse than that.”

When formulating harassment training, he said, employers must ensure that they are not making generalizations about different groups according to their gender, race or sexual orientations.

“Because obviously, we’re all individuals,” he said. “We’re not all the same.”

Kyle Dunphey contributed to this report.

Utah News Dispatch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news source covering government, policy and the issues most impacting the lives of Utahns.

Newsletter