Senator Schmitt Chairs Judiciary Subcommittee Hearing on Ending DEI Discrimination

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Eric Schmitt (R-MO), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, held a hearing on the need to end radical and discriminatory diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, which are in violation of our nation’s civil rights laws.

Watch Senator Schmitt’s opening remarks HERE.

“Today’s hearing is about reaffirming a simple but radical truth: That all Americans are entitled to the equal protection of our laws — and that no Americans should be treated as second-class citizens in their own country. The Trump administration has done extraordinary work in beginning the long, difficult task of restoring this principle in the conduct of our government. This hearing is about ensuring that we do everything in our power to finish the job,” Senator Schmitt said during his opening remarks.

Senator Schmitt on the Left’s Efforts to “Rebrand” DEI Initiatives:

“Even now, after the Supreme Court ruled that race-based admissions are illegal in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the universities continue to flout the law — rebranding their quotas, cloaking them in essay prompts and hiring policies, but keeping the racial spoils system intact.”

Senator Schmitt on the Pervasiveness of DEI programs in Corporate America:

“In the corporate world, DEI has had the same effect. It has meant hiring and promotion not on the basis of competence, but on the basis of race and sex — a world where one’s place in the new caste system determines who rises and who falls. It has meant ‘diversity fellowships’ for which white men need not apply. The effect of these policies has been even more extreme than many might guess: In ‘the year after the Black Lives Matter protests,’ Bloomberg reported, ‘the S&P 100 added more than 300,000 jobs — 94 percent went to people of color.”

Senator Schmitt on DEI’s Violation of our Nation’s Civil Rights Laws:

“Let me be very clear: The only just and legitimate interpretation of our civil rights laws is what their text plainly demands — equal treatment under the law. That means an end to racial preferences. An end to double standards. An end to legal fictions like ‘disparate impact,’ which treats differences in group outcomes as evidence of group discrimination — a totalitarian logic that demands a total leveling of society to fully achieve its ends. Ensuring perfectly equal outcomes between groups — across race, sex and every other protected characteristic — would require a level of social engineering that would make Stalinist Russia look like a libertarian paradise; and even then, it would likely fail. Rather than using civil rights laws to defend a racial caste system, we should be using them — based on the plain and unambiguous meaning of their text — to dismantle that system and restore equal treatment under the law.”

Senator Schmitt on DEI Initiatives in All Levels of Government:

“In many blue states, DEI is now entrenched in every level of government decision-making. At the federal level, it has produced a vast universe of civil service preferences, taxpayer-funded minority-only grants, and open racial discrimination in contracting. Under the Biden Administration, farmers in the Midwest were told they couldn’t get debt relief, restaurants were deemed ineligible for small business grants, and small business owners were barred from lucrative federal contracts, all for the crime of being too male or too white. Much of this took place in the wake of COVID, where years of rolling lockdowns decimated many small businesses and drove countless others to the brink. In the face of all that, the Biden administration redistributed billions of dollars from taxpayers to members of what they deemed to be ‘socially disadvantaged’ groups — while leaving the rest of America out in the cold.”

Senator Schmitt questioned Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Harmeet Dhillon about the Trump administration’s efforts to abolish DEI initiatives. Watch the exchange HERE.

Senator Schmitt questioned America First Legal (AFL) President Gene Hamilton on AFL’s Efforts Combatting Discriminatory Practices. Watch the exchange HERE.

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