(C) Arizona Mirror
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GOP aims to ban ‘discriminatory’ DEI in government, compares it to pre-Civil Rights era racism [1]
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Date: 2025-04-10
Following the lead of the Trump administration, Republicans in the Arizona Legislature want to ban state government from using diversity, equity and inclusion in its hiring practices.
“Make no mistake, the names on the programs have changed, but the fundamental immorality of their purpose is no different than the stain which once marred too much public policy in the decades preceding the Civil Rights Act,” Sen. Janae Shamp told the Senate Regulatory Affairs and Government Efficiency Committee on Feb. 19.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed segregation and other kinds of discrimination, including in employment.
Shamp, a Republican from Surprise, sponsored Senate Bill 1584, which would ban state and local governments from implementing policies or practices that require hiring to be based on anything other than a candidate’s merit.
It would also bar the government from influencing “the composition of employees with reference to race, ethnicity, sex or national origin except to ensure color-blind and race-neutral hiring.”
Shamp’s proposal would allow people who believe they’ve been passed over for a job because of banned DEI practices to sue the state or local government.
Republicans across the country, along with the federal government, have been working to ban diversity, equity and inclusion practices in government, public schools, colleges and in private businesses. The push from the Trump administration, which comes with the threat of federal funding being withheld, has resulted in schools and colleges across the country nixing DEI practices, policies and departments. Many private businesses, like Target and Walmart, followed suit.
Diversity, equity and inclusion practices were adopted in an effort to ensure that people from marginalized groups get the same opportunities as other people who don’t face the same barriers, and to ensure that people from those groups feel comfortable working in environments where they are in the minority.
Billionaire and Trump advisor Elon Musk has called DEI just “another word for racism” and without evidence blamed deaths in Los Angeles wildfires in January on DEI hires at the Los Angeles Fire Department. Musk has used the social media platform X, which he owns, to platform neo-Nazis and white nationalists, and he has personally spread numerous white nationalist conspiracies. In January, he gave two Nazi salutes at a rally following Trump’s inauguration and in March he absolved Adolf Hitler of murdering an estimated 6 million Jewish people during the Holocaust.
Democratic activist Korinne McClemens told the RAGE Committee on Feb. 19 that children in Arizona schools deserve to have leaders who look like them and whose stories they can relate to.
“Let me be the first one to stand here and say that this word ‘merit,’ it’s a new dog whistle for saying that ‘we just want to hire white people,’” McClemens said.
Shamp dismissed criticism from Sen. Mitzi Epstein, D-Tempe, who pointed out that having a diverse medical staff, for instance, would help patients be more comfortable.
A registered nurse, Shamp said that she spent more than a year working at Flagstaff Memorial Hospital and during that time she gained “immense respect and knowledge” of Navajo beliefs.
“I can teach a nurse how to utilize equipment,” Shamp said. “I can’t teach a nurse how to utilize compassion if they don’t have it. Compassion in nursing would be considered merit, and it has nothing to do with race, sex, age or anything else.”
Research has found otherwise. According to an article published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Patient Experience in 2017, “Individuals tend to have the most empathy for others who look or act like them, for others who have suffered in a similar way, or for those who share a common goal.”
Brian Sikma, a Republican political operative from Wisconsin, told the committee that banning DEI would push the United States toward a “greater realization of Dr. (Martin Luther) King’s dream.”
Sikma implied women and minorities hired for jobs were less qualified than men and white people would be, saying that Shamp’s bill would help Arizona to attract the “best and brightest individuals” to the state workforce and ensure that the public knows those workers are qualified for the job.
When the House of Representatives debated the bill on April 9, Minority Leader Oscar De Los Santos said that if the intent of the proposal was truly to put an end to discrimination, lawmakers should have also supported his proposal to ban discrimination in hiring based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
De Los Santos’ House Bill 2364 was never heard by the Republican-controlled committee it was assigned to, like most Democrat-sponsored bills.
His proposal included requirements that, when public entities construct new single-occupancy bathrooms open to the public or renovate old ones, they all be labeled as gender neutral and that each building have at least one accessible bathroom available for use by any gender.
Arizona’s Republican lawmakers have repeatedly attempted to pass legislation in recent years to ban transgender people from using the bathrooms that align with their expressed identities, making it unlikely that they would ever support such a proposal.
Before the Senate voted along party lines to pass her bill on March 4, Shamp said that she found claims that workers weren’t capable of understanding cultures other than their own to be offensive.
“This is about making sure that we get away from woke talking points and rhetoric, and making sure that we are actually hiring the best person for the job,” she said.
During the House floor debate, Rep. Betty Villegas, D-Tucson, argued that Shamp’s proposal does not promote fairness but instead undermines civil rights.
“It pretends that ignoring race and gender will fix inequality when, in reality, it erases the tools we’ve used for decades to fight systemic discrimination,” she said. “By banning any effort to promote diverse hiring, this bill ties the hands of local governments trying to build workforces that reflect the people they serve. It shuts down lawful, inclusive practices in the name of a so-called color blind approach. But justice has never been blind to the realities of race and gender.”
Senate Bill 1584’s next stop is a formal roll-call vote by the full House, where it’s likely to pass. It will almost certainly be met with a veto from Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs.
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[1] Url:
https://azmirror.com/2025/04/10/gop-aims-to-ban-discriminatory-dei-in-government-compares-it-to-pre-civil-rights-era-racism/
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