Idaho Senate panel sends anti-DEI in higher ed bill to floor

BOISE — A Senate committee advanced a bill Friday with sweeping bans on requiring or incentivizing public university and college courses or training related to “DEI,” which stands for diversity, equity and inclusion.

The Senate State Affairs Committee voted to send Senate Bill 1198 to the floor for a vote by the full chamber.

Senate Bill 1198 would also ban DEI in campus activities, faculty or staff positions as well as in hiring and admissions, with enforcement by the Idaho attorney general as well as civil lawsuits from students or staff at the institution. Opponents of the bill said it could chill free speech or undermine programs that resulted in advances for women and other marginalized groups.

The bill’s lengthy definition of DEI includes any training, program, activities or instruction that is derived from or promotes the tenets of concepts such as “critical theory,” including unconscious or implicit bias, internalized racism, structural equity, group marginalization, systemic oppression, social justice, systemic racism, patriarchy, queer theory and others.

“We don’t want a system where we’re banning certain types of thoughts or certain types of ideas from being taught,” bill sponsor Ben Toews, R-Coeur d’Alene said. “We’re just simply saying that you can’t require or otherwise tell students to take those specific courses … unless they’ve chosen to do so based on the degree they’re seeking.”

The bill would allow the governing boards of institutions to create exemptions for courses required under degree programs that are “primarily focused on racial, ethnic, or gender studies.” The bill also includes some exceptions for offices or training to comply with federal laws, such as Title IX or the Americans with Disability Act. 

If a complaint is made, the attorney general could begin an investigation and provide notice to the institution if a violation is found. Schools would have 30 days to cure the violation before the attorney general could pursue a court order to make the change. 

Five of the eight people who testified Friday opposed the bill, arguing that it would limit free speech on campus and hamper programs that have helped women, people of color, and LGTBQ students.

“This bill reveals a stunning level of hypocrisy, in the name of supporting free inquiry, it proposes a massive amount of censorship, including punishing the wrong kind of speech by instructors and staff at universities with extremely costly lawsuits,” Viola resident Karen Hanson said. “University students are not mindless fools that wander onto campus to be brainwashed. They can and do think for themselves. They do not need the Legislature insulting their intelligence by protecting them from controversial ideas.”

Sam Lair of the conservative-think tank the Idaho Freedom Foundation spoke in favor of the bill. He pointed to actions taken by Idaho higher education institutions, despite a recent move by the Idaho State Board of Education approving policies limiting DEI and prohibiting “DEI centers.”

Lair underscored Boise State University’s Student Connections and Support Center — previously the Gender Equity Center.

“Note that it serves all students of sexual orientations, racial, ethnic identities, gender identities, cultural identities, cultural identities and abilities,” Lair said.

He said he supported the bill to “purge the subversive and pernicious ideology from our college campuses and universities once and for all.”

Senate Assistant Minority Leader James Ruchti, D-Pocatello, questioned Lair on what he thought was “pernicious” about DEI.

Ruchti read from the University of Idaho’s statement of diversity and inclusivity, which was a “unconditionally rejecting every form of bigotry, discrimination, hateful rhetoric and hateful action.”

“Do you consider that the pernicious ideology?” Ruchti asked.

Lair and Ruchti got into a back-and-forth exchange, in which Lair responded by pointing to the UI Writing Center’s “anti-racism statement” that had been issued a few years ago and defined critical theory. Ruchti interrupted, saying that did not answer the question.

Lair eventually responded that the spirit of the statement Ruchti read was from a “different time.” He said that having gone to a public land grant university in the past decade — Lair went to the University of Nevada, Reno, according to his LinkedIn — the language that had been created during the Civil Rights Act “is no longer the spirit that’s currently at our colleges and universities.”

The bill was also supported by the Christian-based political advocacy group the Idaho Family Policy Center and the Ada County Republican Party.

It was opposed by the American Association of University Women and the Southwest Idaho chapter of the National Organization for Women.

Ruchti said he opposed the bill over many concerns, but said he thought that the eight-page bill was confusing and hard to follow and thought it would cause “anxiety and uncertainty” about what can and cannot be taught or discussed on campuses.

He highlighted a recent incident in the West Ada School District where a teacher was told to remove a poster that said, “Everyone is Welcome Here,” with cartoon hands of different skin tones. The district cited a policy that requires classrooms to remain “neutral.”

“You get a school district that says all children are welcome here is an opinion, not a fact,” Ruchti said. “I don’t know what that means, but we’re going to get equally silly responses coming out of our universities as they try and figure out how to navigate all this."

Sen. Brandon Shippy, R-New Plymouth, argued that the bill was easy to understand.

“I think this is a good piece of legislation,” Shippy said. “One of the testifiers pointed out that this is really an issue of justice that I think we need to pursue as the Legislature to make sure that justice is being upheld and that we stand on merit and not just issues of partiality.”

Committee Chair Sen. Jim Guthrie, R-McCammon, said he appreciated the work on the bill compared to an earlier version of it. While he thought the new version was better, Guthrie said he would still oppose it because he thought the definitions were “problematic,” and there would be legal ramifications.

He also noted that nearly every student at colleges and universities are legal adults, and he'd never heard from any of them in his districts saying that DEI was a problem. 

“We can try to shield, we can try to judge, we can try to do all that. But once they're out into the real world and they're facing life and facing careers, there is real life out there,” Guthrie said, “and we have to be willing to prepare students for that.”

The committee passed the bill with only Ruchti and Guthrie voting against it. It will go to the Senate floor.