Arizona State Senator Jake Hoffman (R-Queen Creek) filed a bill last Monday to prohibit Arizona from establishing large contracts with private sector entities that require Diversity, Equity and Inclusiveness (DEI) training for their employees.
Hoffman’s SB 1005 would prohibit any “public entity” in Arizona “from requiring or spending public monies on a diversity, equity and inclusion program and allows an employee who is required to participate in the program to bring an action against the public entity,” and government bodies “from entering into a contract with a company that participates in a DEI program,” according to a fact sheet for the bill.
Specific restrictions would prevent any government entity from requiring employees participate in a DEI program, spending taxpayer money on a DEI program, “entering or renewing a contract with a company that participates in a DEI program,” or spending taxpayer money for “services, supplies, information, technology or goods” related to a DEI program.
Hoffman’s legislation would also prohibit governments in Arizona from “advancing or adopting any policy or procedure designed or implemented on the basis of race, sex or color, except as required by federal law” and bar them from “promoting or adopting any theory of unconscious or implicit bias, cultural appropriation, allyship, transgenderism, microaggressions, microinvalidation, group marginalization, anti-racism, systemic oppression, ethnocentrism, structural racism or inequality, social justice, intersectionality, neopronouns, inclusive language, heteronormativity, disparate impact, gender identity or theory, racial or sexual privilege or any related theory as the official position of the public entity.”
The legislation comes after some attributed DEI to the departure of disgraced former Harvard University President Claudine Gay, whose alleged plagiarism drew widespread criticism after she denied the purported rise in antisemitism on the university’s campus in testimony before U.S. Congress.
Bill Ackman, the billionaire investor whose reporting has been credited for helping to cause Gay to resign, said antisemitism at the prestigious university was the “canary in the coal mine” that warned against DEI.
Ackman wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter, “Under DEI’s ideology, any policy, program, educational system, economic system, grading system, admission policy, (and even climate change due its disparate impact on geographies and the people that live there), etc. that leads to unequal outcomes among people of different skin colors is deemed racist.”
The fact sheet highlights similar, existing Arizona laws that prevent public entities from entering into contracts costing more than $100,000 with any organization that participates in anti-Israel boycotts of goods and services, and from contracting with any company that relies on forced labor from ethnic Uyghurs in China.
The bill currently has nine co-sponsors, including Senator Justine Wadsack (R-Tucson) and Representatives Joseph Chaplik (R-Scottsdale) and Alex Kolodin (R-Scottsdale).
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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Georgia Star News, The Virginia Star, and The Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Image “State Senator Jake Hoffman” by Arizona Senate Republicans.
