Texas’ DEI bans: What to know about the term and the debate

Diversity, equity and inclusion — or DEI — generally refers to efforts and practices meant to promote fairness in workplaces, government offices and college campuses, though what that encompasses can vary by organization or person.

DEI is based on three pillars — one for each of the words the acronym represents. Those pillars can serve as steps for organizations to ensure everyone is represented and given equal opportunities, said Jihye Kwon, associate director for survey research at the University of Southern California’s Race and Equity Center, which provides DEI consulting.

Diversity, the first pillar, means having people from different backgrounds and cultures — and people with varied identities — represented in a workplace or institution, Kwon said.

To increase diversity, many organizations focus on groups that have historically had fewer opportunities or have been underrepresented in a field or labor market because of external factors out of their control, like discrimination or lack of opportunities, rather than a lack of ability, according to Monica Khetarpal, a principal of the law firm Jackson Lewis.

She said examples of such groups include women and people of color, but can also encompass people with different socioeconomic statuses, political perspectives, religious beliefs, educational backgrounds, or workers and students who are parents.

“The idea being that the more different perspectives that you get, the more chance you have at innovation,” she said.

Because higher education is a key opportunity for socioeconomic advancement, diversity among students gives more people from varied backgrounds and groups a chance to better their lives, Kwon said. She added that diversity among faculty can help underrepresented students feel more welcome.

DEI practices aimed at diversity can include:

• Using gender neutral language in job descriptions
• Not listing or requiring an advanced degree if it’s not needed for a job
• Increasing job recruiting in overlooked places like Historically Black Colleges and Universities or in non-traditional settings
• Redacting certain identifying information in resumes and job applications in order to avoid bias and increase focus on applicants’ qualifications

Equity focuses on providing fair treatment and opportunities, such as paying all employees fairly based on their work and skills and not discriminating in compensation and promotion opportunities. It can also mean addressing people’s different needs, such as providing accommodations for people with a disability.

“Equity means giving everybody what they need to reach their full potential,” Khetarpal said.

Inclusion, the final pillar or step, focuses on fostering an environment where everyone feels they are respected, valued and empowered to contribute and grow. This includes the ability to learn from mistakes, Khetarpal said.

“Inclusion really means that everybody in an organization feels like their presence there, their contributions are respected and valued in accordance to how much they're contributing,” she said. “And that's across the board, inclusion has to be everybody.”

Inclusion is important to avoid perpetuating power imbalances, and without diversity and equity, there can’t be inclusion, Kwon said.

Examples of efforts to foster inclusion include anti-harassment and anti-discrimination training. It can also entail employee resource groups and campus multicultural centers, which can give employees or students spaces to discuss shared experiences.

Discrimination occurs when someone is treated differently or unfairly solely because of their background or identity, particularly characteristics that laws protect from such treatment. Examples of a “protected characteristic” or “protected class” in education and employment include race, sex, national origin, disability and age. Federal laws and the U.S. Supreme Court have also outlined employment discrimination to include unfair treatment because of a person’s genetic information, pregnancy, gender identity or sexual orientation, as noted by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Similar to the EEOC, the U.S. Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights is tasked with enforcing federal anti-discrimination laws, though the Trump administration is drastically reducing the size and work of that agency. The Texas Workforce Commission also investigates employment discrimination.

A 2024 Supreme Court decision slightly strengthened workers’ protections under the Civil Rights Act by allowing employees to show only “some harm” rather than “significant harm” in discrimination claims on workplace decisions such as transfers.

Modern diversity, equity and inclusion efforts are often linked to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, which pushed back against discrimination and segregation that continued despite an 1866 law guaranteeing equal rights to all U.S. citizens.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination based on race, color, origin, religion and sex in employment, schools and public places. It was one of many landmark pieces of legislation passed during the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Texan. The act’s passage was a key moment because it prompted people and workplaces to learn about discrimination and work to comply with the law, said Jihye Kwon, associate director for survey research at the University of Southern California’s Race and Equity Center.

Since then, DEI policies emerged in corporations as a means to “prevent themselves from running afoul of anti-discrimination laws,” said Grant Hayden, a professor at the SMU Dedman School of Law.

In a 1986 case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that sexual harassment counted as an illegal form or discrimination, prompting further training in companies to avoid liability, according to PBS News.

Later, the movement began to expand beyond race and gender equality. For example, in 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act began protecting people with disabilities from discrimination.

Eventually, universities and organizations also began hiring professionals dedicated to fostering diversity with titles such as chief diversity officer.

As workforces diversified, diversity training programs in workplaces also began to teach employees about the presence of different cultures and inclusive practices around the 2000s, according to DEI experts. The programs also trained staff on unconscious bias, or making judgements of people based on stereotypes without realizing it. With the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements in the 2010s and 2020s, many companies increased efforts to diversify their workforces and foster inclusion.

Backlash against diversity efforts isn’t new, but it’s intensified in recent years with a particular focus on anti-racist frameworks like critical race theory and DEI, which opponents call “divisive” and “exclusionary.”

Some critics of DEI say that programs to elevate historically underrepresented groups amount to giving some people preferential treatment over others.

“DEI is an attempt to undermine what America is and how we see ourselves,” said Sherry Sylvester, a senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. “It divides us. It defines us by part of our history — not all of our history.”

Meanwhile, some liberal employees say companies’ DEI initiatives and training can be more of a form of virtue signaling and window dressing, Hayden said.

In 2023, the Texas Legislature banned DEI offices and related activities at public universities and colleges.

Scrutiny and opposition from lawmakers persists. State Sen. Brandon Creighton, the Conroe Republican who authored the 2023 DEI ban, warned higher education leaders in a March 2025 letter that they could lose millions in state funding for non-compliance.

“This includes renaming, relaunching or reauthorizing a DEI unit under the guise of a different name,” read the letter by Creighton and Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Houston Republican.

This year, Republicans are pushing to expand the DEI ban into public schools through a bill that would prevent schools from developing policies, programs and training that reference race, ethnicity, gender identity or sexual orientation and forbid factoring DEI in employment decisions. It would also ban classroom instruction and student clubs based on gender identity and sexual orientation. Supporters of the legislation have argued DEI policies in schools are ineffective and wasteful.

“It’s clear these programs are already in our schools using millions of taxpayer dollars meant for the classroom to fund political activism and political agendas,” Creighton said during a public hearing last month.

And in recent executive orders, Gov. Greg Abbott told state agencies to stop considering diversity in hiring and reminded them “to comply with the color-blind guarantee of both the state and federal Constitutions.” In January 2025, Abbott said “there has been a concerted effort to invert this commitment to equal treatment through diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), critical race theory (CRT), affirmative action, and other divisive agendas.”

While some people may use DEI and affirmative action interchangeably, they are not synonymous, experts say.

“Most of the public discourse, it's not drawing a distinction between affirmative action and DEI policies, which is something that ought to be done,” Hayden said.

Affirmative action typically refers to attempts to remedy discrimination, and boost employment and educational opportunities for groups considered historically disadvantaged. In some cases this has included intentionally considering applicants’ characteristics like race or sex.

Many point to a 1961 executive order issued by President John F. Kennedy as the inception of affirmative action. The order directed federal contractors and agencies to take "affirmative action" and recommend "affirmative steps," respectively, to ensure no discrimination in employment among the executive branch and government contractors.

Affirmative action was crucial for diversifying colleges — and providing previously withheld advancement opportunities to Black and Latino students — around the 1970s, said Jihye Kwon, associate director for survey research at the University of Southern California’s Race and Equity Center. But it has also been successfully challenged as a form of discrimination against others, such as white and Asian students.

Affirmative action has different definitions and legal implications in education and workplaces. In a 2023 landmark case scrutinizing race-conscious admissions at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that admissions must generally use colorblind criteria. Though Chief Justice John Roberts said universities can consider an applicant's “discussion of how race affected his or her life,” the ruling eradicated the legal standing of affirmative action in admissions.

In the workplace, preferential treatment, such as based on race and gender, is generally illegal, except under “affirmative action plans” that meet specific criteria and are designed to address discrimination, said Grant Hayden, a professor at the SMU Dedman School of Law.

The Supreme Court in 1979 and 1987 cases outlined requirements for employers’ use of valid affirmative action plans to address discrimination:

• The plan has to address a “manifest imbalance” or underrepresentation of women and racial minorities in the workforce.
• The imbalance has to be related to “traditionally segregated jobs.”
• The plan must remedy the disparity without unnecessarily trammeling the interests of other employees.

In executive orders, President Donald Trump directed federal agencies to end all "equity-related" grants or contracts and for contractors to certify that they don’t promote DEI. In a letter, the Trump administration also told schools and universities to stop using “race-based preferences” or risk losing federal funding.

Similarly, Abbott has taken aim at DEI through executive orders ordering state agencies to eliminate all policies and practices that are not “color-blind”.

Texas bans DEI offices, work and mandatory training at colleges and universities. But that law and recent state and federal executive orders don’t mean all DEI efforts, especially those in the workplace, are inherently illegal.

“The executive orders only indicate the administration's interpretation of the law and how the administration will apply their interpretation through executive agencies,” Khetarpal said.

In general, many DEI efforts, such as inviting more people to apply to jobs through rewritten job descriptions or increased recruitment, continue to be legal. Whether DEI programs or policies are unfair depends on how individual programs or efforts are structured and executed, according to Khetarpal.

“To sort of make a blanket judgment really isn't that practical,” she said. “You have to take a look at individual instances and circumstances.”

Still, many companies are reviewing their DEI programs or policies with laws, risks and their values in mind and making adjustments if there are any inconsistencies, Khetarpal said.

The Texas DEI ban at colleges and universities generated sweeping changes across the state's higher education institutions, creating ripple effects that continue to unfold.

The Multicultural Engagement Center at the University of Texas at Austin, which served different groups such as undocumented students, vanished abruptly. Student organizations and cultural graduation ceremonies for Black, Hispanic and LGBTQ+ students, among others, also lost university support. That school also dismantled its Division of Campus and Community Engagement and laid off about 50 employees.

The University of Texas at Dallas eliminated 20 staff positions despite previous assurances from the university president that "no one will lose a job at UTD" because of the DEI ban. The University of Houston replaced its multicultural office with a center for student advocacy. Texas A&M University closed its diversity office and reassigned staff.