(José Niño, Headline USA) North Carolina legislators rejected Gov. Josh Stein’s attempts to block three measures eliminating diversity, equity, and inclusion programs from public education and state government, the College Fix reported.
The Republican-controlled legislature successfully overrode vetoes on House Bill 171, Senate Bill 227, and Senate Bill 558. The Goldwater Institute noted that “each of the bills—House Bill 171, Senate Bill 227, and Senate Bill 558—contains provisions … intended to end DEI initiatives, offices, and mandatory coursework in government and higher education.” Senate Bill 227 and Senate Bill 558 have now become law.
Senate Bill 558 forbids public colleges from engaging in discriminatory practices, requiring DEI coursework, forcing anyone to affirm belief in divisive concepts, or operating DEI offices and staff positions.
The legislation specifies “divisive concepts” as ideas including “that one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex” and “that an individual, solely by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive” and “that the United States was created by members of a particular race or sex for the purpose of oppressing members of another race or sex.”
Public colleges also cannot report or investigate constitutionally protected speech under the new law, “including satire and speech labeled as a microaggression.”
Senate Bill 227 extends these prohibitions to elementary and secondary schools. Governor Stein condemned Republican lawmakers for “stoking the culture wars that divide us rather than fulfilling their long-overdue responsibility of passing a budget.”
Democratic Rep. Amos Quick attacked the legislation as “anti-American.” He asked “How can one be anti-diversity in a proudly diverse society, a society made up of people who are diverse in their ability, ethnicity, gender, age, race?”
House majority leader Representative Brenden Jones defended the measures. “No child should be told that they’re inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, guilty, or morally defined because of their race or sex,” he stated. “That is not censorship, that’s common sense.”
The Goldwater Institute praised the legislation. Director of Higher Education Tim Minella wrote that “DEI cloaks its radical and discriminatory aims with feel-good buzzwords. The ideology behind DEI divides American society into ‘oppressors’ and ‘oppressed’—with both groups defined by identity categories such as race, ethnicity, and sex.”
Multiple states enacted comparable restrictions following President Donald Trump’s federal prohibition on DEI practices. Kansas university officials recently adopted policies limiting diversity programming.
However, a Manhattan Institute study discovered that diversity requirements persist at universities across nearly twelve states that already passed anti-DEI legislation, suggesting enforcement remains inconsistent.
José Niño is the deputy editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/JoseAlNino
