Sponsors (20)
The bill protects individuals from compelled DEI trainings and reduces federal DEI spending/requirements—favoring religious and institutional autonomy and potential cost savings—but at the cost of cutting staff and programs that address discrimination, creating compliance and litigation risks, and weakening agencies' ability to track and remedy inequities.
Federal employees, students, and contractor employees will not be forced to participate in DEI/critical-theory trainings or face adverse personnel actions for refusing such trainings.
Traditional Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) and ADA enforcement offices and their complaint processes are preserved, allowing established nondiscrimination procedures to continue.
Agencies and regulated entities can eliminate duplicative DEI offices and are barred from buying many DEI trainings, producing potential administrative cost savings and reduced compliance obligations.
Federal employees, contractors, grantee staff, and nonprofit workers in DEI roles face job losses or elimination of positions funded by federal programs and contracts.
Reduced capacity for agencies, schools, hospitals, and contractors to run inclusion, anti-bias, and equity programs risks worsening workplace and programmatic discrimination, chilling discussions about race, gender, and LGBTQ+ issues, and increasing harassment or complaint incidence.
Broad bans, vague definitions of 'prohibited DEI practices,' and limits on data/reports/equity tools create legal uncertainty and administrative compliance burdens for federal agencies, grant recipients, and contractors.
Based on analysis of 19 sections of legislative text.
Bans federal DEI offices, programs, and specified trainings across agencies, contractors, grantees, and committees; rescinds DEI authorities and creates private civil penalties.
Introduced February 4, 2025 by Eric Stephen Schmitt · Last progress February 4, 2025
Prohibits federal agencies, contractors, grantees, and advisory committees from establishing, funding, or requiring diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility (DEIA) offices, programs, or a broad set of DEI-related trainings and practices; rescinds several existing executive orders and related memoranda; and removes or repeals DEI language across many federal statutes. It requires agencies to close or wind down affected offices (with reductions in force rules), bars use of federal funds for specified DEI activities while allowing use of non‑Federal funds in some cases, creates new contracting and grant terms to enforce the bans, and creates private civil remedies with statutory damages and attorneys' fees for violations.