Anti-DEI legislation is the wave of state statutes, federal executive orders, and enforcement actions since 2023 that restrict or ban diversity, equity, and inclusion programs at public universities, government agencies, federal contractors, and, through Title VII enforcement, private employers. Roughly 30 such laws have been signed across the United States as of early 2026, with more than 150 bills introduced at the state and federal level.1U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. What You Should Know About DEI-Related Discrimination at Work The rules vary by jurisdiction, but they share a common target: removing race, sex, and ethnicity as criteria in hiring, training, admissions, funding, and programming decisions at taxpayer-supported institutions.
Where the Laws Apply
State laws restricting DEI have been signed in Florida, Texas, Utah, Alabama, Iowa, Arkansas, Indiana, Georgia, and others, with Republican lawmakers in more than 30 states having introduced legislation of some kind. The push accelerated after the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which struck down race-conscious college admissions and signaled a broader legal shift away from identity-based institutional policies.2Supreme Court of the United States. Students for Fair Admissions Inc v President and Fellows of Harvard College
At the federal level, the biggest changes came through executive orders signed in January 2025, not through Congress. A Senate bill that would codify those orders into permanent law, the Dismantle DEI Act of 2025 (S.382), remains stuck in committee as of mid-2026.3Congress.gov. S.382 – Dismantle DEI Act of 2025 That matters: because the current federal framework rests on executive action, a future administration could reverse much of it without new legislation.
Private employers are not directly bound by most state anti-DEI statutes, but they face substantial exposure through Equal Employment Opportunity Commission enforcement of Title VII, and, if they hold federal contracts, through new certification requirements.
What Public Universities Can No Longer Do
Public colleges and universities absorb the heaviest impact. The common provisions cluster around a few targets.
The first is DEI offices themselves. Texas Senate Bill 17 prohibits any state-funded college or university from establishing or maintaining a DEI office, hiring employees to perform DEI functions, or contracting with third parties to do the same.4Texas Legislature Online. Texas Senate Bill 17 – Relating to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Initiatives at Public Institutions of Higher Education Florida’s Senate Bill 266 bars public higher education institutions from spending state or federal dollars on programs the law characterizes as discriminatory DEI.5Executive Office of the Governor. Governor Ron DeSantis Signs Legislation to Strengthen Floridas Position as National Leader in Higher Education
The second target is diversity statements in hiring and admissions. Several states now prohibit public universities from requiring applicants for jobs or enrollment to submit written statements about their commitment to diversity or inclusion values. Supporters of the bans call these statements ideological litmus tests. Kansas, Iowa, and others have introduced or passed measures on this point.
Third, some laws reach into student programming. Institutions in affected states face restrictions on funding campus events, clubs, or graduation ceremonies organized around specific racial or ethnic identities. Universities must audit their student organizations and programming budgets accordingly. Penalty structures are usually not spelled out in dollar amounts; the more common consequence is loss of state appropriations or referral to oversight boards.
Race-restricted scholarships sit in a shifting area. While Students for Fair Admissions addressed admissions specifically, its reasoning has pushed states to extend the same logic to financial aid. Arkansas and Indiana have revised their state-funded scholarship rules to prohibit race or ethnicity preferences. Privately funded race-based scholarships at public universities occupy a grayer legal zone, and institutions in states with broad anti-DEI statutes are increasingly restructuring these awards around criteria like socioeconomic background or first-generation status.
What Changed at the Federal Level in 2025
On January 20, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14151, “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” directing federal agencies to shut down internal DEI offices, terminate DEI-related positions, and stop funding programs the administration considered identity-based.6Federal Register. Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing
A companion order, Executive Order 14173, reached federal contractors and grant recipients. Organizations doing business with the federal government must certify that they do not operate programs promoting DEI in ways that violate federal anti-discrimination law.7The White House. Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity A March 2026 follow-up order defined “racially discriminatory DEI activities” for contractors as any disparate treatment based on race or ethnicity in recruitment, hiring, promotions, vendor agreements, or resource allocation.8The White House. Addressing DEI Discrimination by Federal Contractors Contractors now face a practical choice: certify compliance and restructure programs that could be characterized as identity-based, or risk losing their government business.
A separate January 2025 executive order targeted K-12 education, directing federal agencies to develop a strategy for eliminating funding that supports instruction the administration considers discriminatory. It prohibits concepts like teaching that members of one race are inherently superior, or that an individual bears personal responsibility for historical actions by others of the same race, and it explicitly reaches teacher education, certification, licensing, and professional development.9The White House. Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling
What Private Employers Face
The most concrete impact on private employers has come through the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The EEOC has stated that DEI programs, regardless of what an employer calls them, are subject to the same Title VII prohibitions against race and sex discrimination as any other employment practice.10U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Reminder of Title VII Obligations Related to DEI Initiatives The agency regained its full quorum in October 2025, giving it the power to bring systemic cases and large-scale federal litigation.
The EEOC has backed that authority with action across 2025 and 2026:
- Planned Parenthood of Illinois settled for $500,000 over allegations that the organization segregated employees by race during mandatory meetings and subjected white employees to harassment through DEI trainings.
- HCL America settled for approximately $500,000 after the company allegedly rejected an Asian male applicant as not “diverse” and “too old,” instructing recruiters to prioritize candidates based on gender and ethnicity.
- The New York Times faced a May 2026 lawsuit alleging race and sex discrimination in promotion against a white male employee.
- Nike was subject to a subpoena enforcement action arising from an investigation into allegations of systemic race discrimination through DEI programs.
- Six major law firms reached settlements totaling $700 million, securing commitments to merit-based employment practices.
These cases establish a pattern private employers need to take seriously.11U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. EEOC Delivers on Administration Priorities and President Trumps Executive Orders The EEOC’s position is that employment decisions must be based on individual skills and qualifications, not on achieving demographic outcomes. Any program that steers hiring, promotion, or training opportunities based on race or sex is vulnerable to a Title VII challenge, even where the employer frames the effort as promoting inclusion. Companies do not need to be federal contractors to face this risk. A single employee charge can trigger an investigation.
Religious Accommodation as a Pressure Point
Employees who object to DEI training on religious grounds have gained leverage. The Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Groff v. DeJoy raised the bar employers must clear when denying religious accommodations, replacing the old “minimal cost” standard with a requirement that the employer show the accommodation would impose a genuinely substantial burden on the business.12Supreme Court of the United States. Groff v DeJoy The EEOC has designated religious accommodation and discrimination as a specific enforcement focus for 2026, driven by a rise in employees requesting exemptions from DEI programming, pronoun policies, and similar workplace initiatives. Employers who mandate diversity training without offering meaningful accommodations face heightened litigation risk.
Government and School Training Restrictions
A parallel track of legislation restricts what government employees and public school teachers can be taught during mandatory training. These “divisive concepts” laws typically prohibit instruction in ideas about inherent racial guilt, group-based moral superiority, and collective responsibility for historical wrongs. Georgia’s statute prohibits training that teaches concepts like one race being inherently superior, an individual being inherently racist by virtue of race, or that character traits like hard work are racist because they were promoted by a particular racial group.13Justia Law. Georgia Code 20-1-11 – Advocating for Divisive Concepts
The laws generally do not ban discussion of these topics outright. They draw a line between objective presentation and what they characterize as endorsement or indoctrination. A training that discusses the history of racial discrimination may be permissible; one that asks employees to accept personal responsibility for systemic inequity based on their race would not be. The ambiguity of that distinction has been a recurring source of legal challenges, and human resources departments in affected states have to audit their entire curriculum to stay on the correct side of it.
Where Courts Have Pushed Back
Litigation has produced mixed results.
A district court initially issued a nationwide preliminary injunction against key provisions of Executive Orders 14151 and 14173. In February 2026 the Fourth Circuit vacated that injunction in National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education v. Trump, holding that the plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge the enforcement-threat provisions and were unlikely to succeed on facial challenges to the termination and certification requirements.14U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education v Trump The court reasoned that the certification provision requires organizations only to confirm compliance with existing federal anti-discrimination law, and that the President has broad authority to set funding priorities. The Fourth Circuit left the door open for future “as-applied” challenges, meaning organizations facing specific enforcement actions can still contest how the orders are interpreted against them.
A federal district court in New Hampshire separately granted a preliminary injunction against the Department of Education’s February 2025 “Dear Colleague Letter,” which had threatened funding cuts to schools operating DEI programs. The court found the letter unconstitutionally vague because it failed to define what actually constitutes a DEI program or explain when such programs cross the line into discrimination, and it found viewpoint discrimination in that a professor who teaches that structural racism exists would violate the letter while one who denies it would not.15U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire. Opinion No 2025 DNH 055 P That injunction remains in place for the plaintiffs and their members.
State statutes have fared better. When professors and students challenged Alabama’s SB 129 on First Amendment grounds, a federal judge declined to block the law, noting that the statute permits instruction that presents prohibited concepts “in an objective manner without endorsement.” A professor could discuss the theory that racism contributes to health disparities but could not present it as established fact students must accept. That discussion-versus-indoctrination distinction has become a recurring framework in these rulings.
The Accreditation Bind
A less visible but practically significant consequence of state anti-DEI laws is the conflict they create with national accreditation standards. The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education incorporated diversity requirements into its Common Program Requirements effective July 2023, including recruiting and retaining a diverse workforce, resident demonstration of cultural humility, and training environments free from discrimination. Residency programs affiliated with public universities in states banning DEI initiatives can find themselves in a compliance bind: following state law may mean falling short of accreditation, and following accreditation may mean violating state law.
Programs in affected states have been advised to consult legal counsel and, where full compliance is legally impossible, to report the constraint to the ACGME. The conflict is not limited to medicine. Any professional field where national accrediting bodies require diversity-related competencies faces the same tension, and for students the stakes are high because a lost accreditation can render a credential worthless in the job market.
The Legal Arguments on Both Sides
Supporters of anti-DEI laws draw on two foundations. The first is the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which provides that no state shall deny any person equal protection under the laws.16Congress.gov. U.S. Constitution – Fourteenth Amendment If the government cannot treat people differently based on race, the argument goes, then programs that distribute resources or hiring advantages based on racial identity violate that guarantee. The Supreme Court reinforced that reasoning in Students for Fair Admissions.
The second is the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VI prohibits race, color, or national origin discrimination in any program receiving federal financial assistance.17Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 2000d – Prohibition Against Exclusion From Participation in, Denial of Benefits of, and Discrimination Under Federally Assisted Programs on Ground of Race, Color, or National Origin Title VII prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Anti-DEI advocates argue that diversity programs often cross from correcting discrimination into committing it. The EEOC has adopted this framing, stating it enforces “equal employment opportunity” rather than “equitable employment outcomes.”
Opponents argue that DEI programs are themselves a response to discrimination, that the statutes have significant vagueness problems courts have already recognized, and that the laws chill lawful efforts to recruit broadly or create welcoming environments. Where anti-discrimination law ends and viewpoint suppression begins remains contested, and outcomes will depend on how specifically each law is drafted and how aggressively each administration chooses to enforce it.