Sponsors (21)
Introduced February 4, 2025 by Eric Stephen Schmitt · Last progress February 4, 2025
The bill sharply restricts federal support for DEI activities and prohibits many DEI trainings—protecting workers from compelled trainings and reducing federal spending—while risking job losses, reduced capacity to address discrimination, substantial compliance and litigation costs, and disruption to education, military, and regulatory diversity efforts.
Federal employees (and many recipients of federal funds) cannot be compelled to take trainings on DEI, critical theory, intersectionality, or sexual orientation/gender identity, protecting workers from mandatory participation or punishment for refusal.
Federal spending of taxpayer funds on DEI offices and certain DEI-related trainings is restricted and contractors/recipients may only run DEI programs with non‑Federal funds, reducing direct federal outlays for these programs.
Historically organized Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) and ADA enforcement offices and processes are preserved, maintaining existing disability accommodations and traditional EEO complaint channels.
Employees from marginalized groups (racial and ethnic minorities, women, LGBTQ people, people with disabilities) and those who support them may lose agency capacity to identify and address workplace discrimination because DEI offices, data collection, equity reports, and related activities are curtailed.
Federal employees and private contractors who staff DEI offices and programs (and vendors that provide DEI trainings) face job loss or lost contracts as offices are closed and funding for those activities is restricted.
Agencies, grant recipients, contractors, schools, and universities will face substantial administrative and transition costs, higher compliance burdens, and increased litigation risk as programs are wound down, policies revised, and new enforcement processes implemented.
Based on analysis of 19 sections of legislative text.
Prohibits federal agencies, contractors, grantees, and advisory committees from maintaining DEI offices or using federal funds for specified DEI programs/trainings and creates private enforcement with monetary penalties.
Bans a wide range of federal diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEI/DEIA) activities across the federal government, federal contractors, grant recipients, advisory committees, and accrediting agencies. It rescinds related executive orders and memos, requires federal DEI offices and similar programs to be closed within set deadlines, forbids certain trainings and the use of federal funds for DEI offices or chief diversity officers, and creates civil penalties and a private right of action for violations.