Alabama House passes bill restricting DEI initiatives, stirs debate on free speech

Rep. Ed Oliver, R-Dadeville, stands on the floor of the Alabama House of Representatives on Feb. 8, 2024. (Brian Lyman/Alabama Reflector)

The Alabama House Thursday approved a bill that would ban the public funding of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and leave teachers or employees who use “divisive concepts” subject to potential termination.

SB 129 , sponsored by Sen. Will Barfoot, R-Pike Road, passed the House on a 75-28 party-line vote, with Republicans in favor and Democrats opposed. It goes back to the Senate for concurrence or a conference committee after the House amended the bill.

The legislation would ban teachers and state employees from compelling others to accept or conform to “divisive concepts.” The bill includes examples of such concepts, like the notion that individuals are inherently accountable for past actions based on their race, color, religion, sex, ethnicity, or national origin.

The bill comes after conservative groups and politicians have attacked DEI programs across the country. Florida’s version of the bill, the Stop Woke Act , is currently on hold after a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Appeals Court referred to the legislation as “the greatest First Amendment sin,” as reported by the Guardian Tuesday.

A version of the legislation had been sponsored in the two previous years by Rep. Ed Oliver, R-Dadeville, but it never received a Senate vote. Oliver said earlier in the session that he wanted the Senate to pass it first so the House would not “kill three days” through filibustering.

“When we look at K-12, the Legislature has complete authority because it’s compulsory — we make kids go to school,” Oliver said. “So it’s our responsibility to make sure that that is a level playing field, and that there are guardrails for my kids, your kids or anybody else’s.”

Democratic House members said the bill rolls back progress made in providing access to opportunities for minorities.

Rep. Juandalynn Givan, D-Birmignham, said on the House floor that this is Alabama’s version “of attempting to further kill affirmative action in the state of Alabama.”

“It is allowing our racial ethnicity, and the significance of our skin color, to be slowly stripped away, in every shape, form or fashion,” Givan said.

House Minority Leader Anthony Daniels, D-Huntsville, said in a press conference after the bill’s passage that the bill “is another example that we are trying to continue to divide our state” at a time the state is trying to attract people to “live, work and play.”

House Minority Leader Anthony Daniels, D-Huntsville, speaks during the session of the Alabama House of Representatives on Tuesday, March 14, 2023. (Stew Milne for Alabama Reflector)

“What does this say for our children and grandchildren? This is saying that we are not embracing diversity, equity and inclusion. We don’t pay attention to differences. We are not for differences. We’re trying to limit speech and opportunity for certain communities,” he said.

Daniels said he hopes legal action will follow as it did in Florida.

Rep. Prince Chestnut, D-Selma, added an amendment to the bill that Chestnut said would protect the First Amendment and academic freedom in higher education.

The text before the House on Thursday originally stated that nothing in the legislation “may be construed to inhibit or violate the First Amendment rights of any student or employee, or to undermine the duty of a public institution of higher education to protect, to the greatest degree, academic freedom, intellectual diversity, and free expression, provided that none of these protected tenets conflict with this act.”

The amendment struck “provided that none of these protected tenets conflict with this act.”

Daniels said that he is hopeful that organizations are preparing to file lawsuits.

“Even if we have to file lawsuit about this particular issue, we will,” he said.

House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter, R-Rainsville, said in a press conference after the House adjourned that the bill put everyone, regardless of background, on the same level playing field, but that with any piece of legislation, he suggested it could be challenged in court.

“Everything we do has a chance to be challenged in courts. They were set in law for the state, so anytime you do that there’s a possibility. Some probably more than others,” he said.

Rep. Neil Rafferty, D-Birmingham, said that DEI “is not an attempt to exclude you” but an attempt to “address our history head on accepting the truth and work toward a more perfect union that includes all of us.”

Rafferty said that DEI “doesn’t seek to divide” but to bring people together “regardless of our myriad differences to the bounty, to experience the freedom our Constitution guarantees us.”

“We cannot celebrate and honor triumph without first reckoning with the tragic consequences of our history. Like I said, that is going to be uncomfortable, and it should be. But at the end of the day, we cannot experience the light of truth without reckoning with the dark of our past,” he said.

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