March 2025 Update
Since 2023, 16 anti-DEI bills have become law. These bills tend to focus on restricting DEI offices/staff, DEI training, diversity statements, and identity-based hiring practices. The Chronicle of Higher Education has created two resources to track these legislative efforts. A subscription to the Chronicle is required to access information in the links below.
DEI Legislation Tracker
Response by Public Colleges to Anti-DEI Legislation
There has been legislation updates in Wyoming, Arkansas, Ohio, and West Virginia since last month’s update.
Wyoming
Now has an anti–diversity, equity and inclusion law that bans community colleges and the University of Wyoming, the state’s only public university, from requiring “instruction promoting institutional discrimination.”
House Bill 147/Enrolled Act 67, which Republican governor Mark Gordon signed this month, defines institutional discrimination as any one of a broad list of concepts similar to the “divisive concepts” Donald Trump targeted in an executive order during his first presidential term. Anti-DEI bills in other states have also included lists of verboten concepts.
According to Wyoming’s list, public higher education institutions can no longer require instruction promoting the idea “that meritocracy or certain traits including a hard work ethic are racist or sexist.” They also can’t require instruction that promotes the assigning of fault “to members of a race, color, religion, sex, ethnicity or national origin” based on those demographic labels, or the idea that anyone should accept a sense of guilt or needing to apologize on the basis of those labels."
Arkansas
In February 2025, State Sen. Jonathan Dismang and State Rep. Matthew J. Shepherd, both Republicans, introduced a bill that would ban diversity statements in hiring and prohibit accreditors from requiring diversity statements, collecting information related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, or basing an accreditation decision on reviews of diversity, equity, and inclusion, among many other provisions. Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed the bill into law on March 18, 2025 (Senate Bill 246/House Bill 1512).
Ohio
In January 2025, State Sen. Jerry C. Cirino, a Republican, introduced a bill that would ban diversity statements from being used in hiring, promotion, and admissions; diversity training; and DEI offices. Colleges would also need to “affirm and declare” that they provide “the fullest degree of intellectual diversity" and that they “seek out invited speakers who have diverse ideological or political views.” The companion House Bill 6 was also introduced in January 2025. The bill passed the Senate in February and the House in March (Senate Bill 1/House Bill 6).
West Virginia
In February 2025, State Sen. Patricia Rucker, a Republican, introduced a bill that would prohibit public colleges from requiring or soliciting diversity statements in hiring, promotion, or admissions and from giving preferential consideration to applicants, students, and faculty and staff members "on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, gender identity, or sexual orientation." The bill would also ban mandatory diversity training and spending on diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. It would prohibit in required courses, the idea, among others, that "one race, ethnic group, or biological sex is morally, or intellectually superior to another race, ethnic group, or biological sex for any inherent or innate reason." In March, Del. Bryan Ward, a Republican, introduced a companion bill, House Bill 3319.
