DEI in Arizona is, thankfully, facing a reckoning with a new federal investigation and now a challenge before the Arizona Supreme Court. But if lawmakers want to end discriminatory “diversity, equity, and inclusion” practices for good, they must give voters the chance to enshrine protections in the state constitution through HCR2044.
In a positive development for opponents of identity politics, the Arizona Supreme Court on Thursday announced that it will take up a challenge to the discriminatory DEI training Arizona State University mandates for its employees, granting review of a lawsuit filed by the Goldwater Institute on behalf of Professor Owen Anderson. The Court will decide whether Anderson, as an ASU employee, has the right to sue the university to challenge its illegal training requirement.
The court’s announcement comes one day after the U.S. Department of Justice launched its own investigation into ASU’s ongoing DEI practices, jolting Arizonans back to the reality that discriminatory DEI remains rampant in Arizona’s higher education system. That’s why it’s more important than ever that lawmakers allow voters to weigh in on HCR2044, a state constitutional amendment to permanently rein in DEI.
While the Arizona Supreme Court case will probe the narrow topic of DEI trainings—leaving any other discriminatory DEI practices and programming untouched—the DOJ’s announcement yesterday declared:
“Recent viral videos indicating ASU denied equal treatment to students based on race, color, or national origin — while attempting to hide its discriminatory practices from federal scrutiny — prompted the investigation….The Division will examine whether ASU subjects its students to illegal discrimination through its DEI policies in admissions, recruitment, scholarships, tutoring, and the provision of educational support.”
In short, the feds are finally holding universities’ feet to the fire. But DEI advocates have already made clear they plan to weather the storm and wait out the current administration. That’s why they are so opposed to HCR2044, which would permanently banish discriminatory DEI practices, trainings, and course mandates from Arizona’s public educational institutions—no matter who sits in the White House or on the Supreme Court.
Sponsored by House Speaker Steve Montenegro, HCR2044 would enshrine the strongest state protections against DEI and race-based “affirmative action” of any state in the country. It’s no wonder that DEI proponents are upset. As one left-leaning state lawmaker complained, HCR 2044 would “jeopardize federal funding tied to diversity initiatives … once we’re over this heinous administration and we start to be sane again in our country.”
Lawmakers like this are admitting the quiet part out loud: they know that when their ideological allies retake the helm at the national level, they can threaten universities’ eligibility for federal grants on their embrace of racially divisive programing and protocols by exploiting an existing loophole in the Arizona Constitution.
But Arizona students, state employees, and state contractors shouldn’t have to suffer from the whiplash of Washington D.C., nor watch their state universities devolve further into hotbeds of DEI (or whatever surface-level rebrand it subsequently undergoes).
Fortunately, HCR2044 would turn this dynamic on its head, forcing our universities to stand against federal extortion and discriminatory DEI initiatives—now and always, regardless of the euphemisms used.
It’s no wonder that leading national conservative voices who’ve been in the trenches of higher education policy have echoed the call for Arizona lawmakers to pass HCR2044. As Stanley Kurtz of the Ethics and Public Policy Center recently wrote in National Review:
“Thankfully, Arizona House Speaker Steve Montenegro and Senate President Warren Petersen could ensure that House Concurrent Resolution 2044 (only a single senate vote away from passage) goes to the voters in a constitutional referendum this November…The state constitutional amendment proposed in H.C.R. 2044 would do far more than merely close the loophole that allows racial preferences to be imposed by the feds. H.C.R. 2044 would explicitly ban ‘mandatory diversity statements’ for faculty job applicants, ban mandatory DEI training, and make sure that students are no longer required to take DEI-based courses in order to graduate.”
Indeed, those course mandates represent yet another egregious insult to Arizona students and taxpayers. Not only has the University of Arizona previously implemented a mandatory two-course DEI requirement for all undergraduates (at a cost of nearly $70 million over each four-year period), but as we at the Goldwater Institute recently uncovered, mandatory honors college requirements at ASU and U of A are steeped in course sections pushing radical DEI content. Indeed, in an embarrassment to the institutions, courses meeting these requirements include the likes of “Eating the Globe: The Diverse, Weird, and Queer Food Politics,” which asks, “Can food be colonized and decolonized?”
Other mandatory honors courses, such as ASU’s “Human Event,” feature faculty syllabi asking academically unserious questions like “What is the relationship between the white female gaze and the eroticized Black male body in the text?”
HCR2044 will not single-handedly cure higher education of all its ideological rot, but it will build a permanent foundation for our institutions, anchoring them with an enduring commitment to colorblind excellence and academic integrity.
Arizona lawmakers must take this opportunity before the moment passes—and before federal pressure to push divisive racial identity politics takes hold once again.
Matt Beienburg is the Director of Education Policy at the Goldwater Institute. He also serves as director of the Institute’s Van Sittert Center for Constitutional Advocacy.
