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The Kansas House Committee on Higher Education Budget approved a bill Thursday that would charge public colleges and universities up to $10,000 in penalties if they were to require prospective students or employees to “pledge allegiance” to what the bill called the political ideologies of “diversity, equity [and] inclusion.”
The legislation—House Bill 2460—was approved along party lines. It adds Kansas to a growing list of states where lawmakers are trying to end the use of so-called DEI litmus tests in recruiting and hiring faculty members or admitting students. The bill will proceed to a vote before the full House, but its prospects for becoming law are uncertain.
The bill underwent several amendments in the committee meeting, including reducing the penalty from $100,000 to $10,000 per instance of using a diversity requirement and giving an institution multiple opportunities to correct its wrong before being fined.
Representative Steven Howe, the Republican who sponsored the bill and chairs the committee, said public institutions shouldn’t be allowed to mandate that individuals uphold DEI doctrine as a condition of employment or enrollment. “My intention on this bill was never to be punitive in nature, but it was to address what I would deem as a discriminatory practice of conditioning employment to these statements,” Howe said at the committee meeting.
He did, however, note that the bill would not eliminate DEI programs and would carve out an exemption for staff directly engaged in DEI programming. It also would not restrict the ability to discuss diversity in the classroom.
The bill was introduced last year after Governor Laura Kelly, a Democrat, vetoed a budget directive that would have similarly barred the use of DEI statements in hiring.
One of three Democrats who voted against the bill, Representative Tom Sawyer, proposed an amendment to remove the words “diversity,” “equity” and “inclusion” from the bill and limit its application to discrimination based on political ideology.
“I don’t understand why those words are in there, because I don’t understand why anyone would be against equity or being inclusive,” he said. “But I do understand why someone would not want to be discriminated against for their political ideology.”
The amendment failed.
